An individualist society can simulate socialism with contracts, but a socialist society cannot even tolerate individualists, let alone simulate individualism. Yes, of course the contract simulation doesn't include any coercion beyond upholding contracts, but that's still more than socialism allows for individualists. The fact that socialism requires coercion ought to be telling, but most people write it off as all governments are coercive.
Another problem with taking over an anarchy is the utter lack of government structure. No centrally-controlled taxation, police powers, judicial system, regulatory agencies, or any bureaucracies to co-opt. All would have to be built up from scratch, especially including the private counterparts, making monetary gains elusive.
Businesses would have existing accounting systems and internal procedures and bureaucrats, but the Mafia was famous for keeping two sets of books, and I imagine anarchists under occupation would find it even easier. Effective enforcement would require occupation observers in every store and office to verify all transactions. Even spot checks would be useless, since would-be customers could avoid stores with occupation observers. Even if they didn't notice the observer before they came in, it would be trivially easy to ask for something known to be out of stock and leave without buying anything.
That first sentence is so important. It makes me nuts when people claim individualists or libertarians are against family ties or communities, as though such groups only work if people are coerced into joining them or remaining with them. The government doesn't enforce Amish family, church and community ties, yet they work quite well. (In fact, the Amish go to great lengths to keep the "English" government out of their business.)
Part of the problem is conflating "anarchy" and "chaos". They are not the same. (I have my doubts about how long anarchy could avoid developing gangs which turn into governments, simply because people want justice now, not maybe karma maybe later. It's one of the reasons I spent so much time on mu Chartertopia project.)
I have had conversations with people who believe that all roads ever built were by government. They do not believe that air traffic control was invented by private airlines or that radio frequency allocation was handled privately at first, then just as common law began recognizing a property interest in frequencies, cronies convinced legislators to create the FCC precursor so cronies could control frequencies by central planning. They are so indoctrinated by government the almighty that they cannot imagine society without government.
The bigger problem is how do private rights enforcement agencies defend against being conquered by states?
Another way to put this problem is that the efficient size for a private rights enforcement agency tends to be much larger than the efficient size for a production firm. And unless the area has extremely favorable geography, generally much larger.
Also private rights enforcement agencies have a free-rider problem, which causes them to evolve into protection rackets and ultimately governments.
I think they would deliver better justice only if they were not private law. I believe any system of truly private law, where individuals can have their own sets of morality laws, can only result in so much bloody mayhem that they would toss the private law aspect.
Maybe I should describe my understanding of what this concept is.
Everyone has a protection agency, an insurance company, a security subscription, whatever the details are. If Alice finds her home burgled, someone investigates -- Alice, the security agency, some independent investigation agency. They identify Bob.
Absent malfeasance on Alice's part, her agency reimburses her regardless.
Alice's agency contacts Bob, he says talk to his agency.
The agencies talk, negotiate some decision. If Bob's agency agrees Bob did it, they reimburse Alice's agency and bill Bob.
If Bob doesn't reimburse his agency, they drop him like a hot potato. No other agency will touch a deadbeat like Bob, so he now has no protection. Alice could beat him up, kill him, and no agency will take his side. So obviously Bob will pay up.
If the agencies can't agree, the alternative is literal war, and since that is expensive in time, blood, and treasure, they will compromise.
There can also be courts, but that is a side issue.
One of the less obvious keys to all this is that because these replace government, someone else has to write laws, and that is these agencies. They all write their own laws. People look them over like any other insurance company and decide which ones best match their idea of justice, along with price, convenience, reputation, etc.
Sometimes laws are written by courts, sometimes both, and when agencies disagree, they have to find a jointly acceptable court. But as I said, that's just a side issue.
This difference in laws is one place where the idea goes off the rails. "Private law" implies people can have whatever laws they want. Carol's agency hates drinkers, Doug's agency mandates a morning whiskey. If Carol sees Doug drinking in public, she wants her agency to sue Doug. Doug countersues for breaking his agency's law. No compromise is possible.
Remember that thing about war if they can't compromise? Might makes right. Smaller agencies won't survive.
Another flaw is this idea that Bob burglar will pay his agency's bill and go on with his life. But his agency now knows he's a burglar. They're going to jack up his premiums sky high, and he won't be able to pay them. He'll be agency-less and have no protection from anybody, Alice included. He'll be an outlaw.
The same applies to teetotaler Carol and drunk Doug. Their agencies will bill each other, pay up because war is too expensive, and drop Carol and Doug for not paying their bills, because everyone knows they will continue to be offended at each other's immorality.
Same with a zillion topics, from abortion to smoking to dress codes to music to every taboo and contraband and uptight prude the world has every imagined.
Some of the proposals I've seen envision constitution-mandated slave farms and factories, where outlaws work off their debts and be released with a clean sheet. Ha! We all know well rehabilitation works in real life. Bob will go right back to burgling, Carol and Doug will go right back to being offended.
These proponents also assure us these slaves will be treated kindly so as to pay off their debt as quickly as possible. Uh huh, we know how kindly slaves have been treated throughout history.
Another topic seldom discussed is all these outlaws. When outlaw Ellen violates her contract with Fred, his agency pays him, but Ellen has no agency. Does Fred's agency refuse to pay him because he didn't have uninsured criminal coverage and should have verified Ellen's insurance status before contracting with her?
Seems to me there would be a lot of deadbeat outlaws. This scheme has turned into uninsured criminal insurance more than security insurance.
In other words, "private law" is tantamount to false advertising. The agencies will coalesce into a few with very similar laws, where the only negotiations will be between 3rd degree larceny and 2nd degree burglary.
I published a fairly detailed description of a private law system and analysis of how it would work more than fifty years ago, expanded some in later editions. It differs in various ways from what you have imagined. If you wish to criticize it you can find the book as a free pdf on my web page.
I've been rereading it and taking notes, and it surprised me a little to find I have most of the same objections I wrote down sometime 5-10 years ago. But my notes are too disorganized to write up yet, and too long to post here. I'll work them over in the next few days and send you a DM or email or something.
I should go read it even if I don't wish to criticize it. As nonsensical as private law seems to me, I am sure your description will be better than most. My notes are at least ten years old. Is this in Machinery? -- Yes it is, if I'd read just two more comments.
> Does Fred's agency refuse to pay him because he didn't have uninsured criminal coverage and should have verified Ellen's insurance status before contracting with her?
Yes. More precisely, that's what will happen under the assumption that Fred's agency has written their policy that way, which I would expect to be the case.
Which actually means Fred will be sure to only enter into contracts with people who have agencies insuring them that are willing to work with his agency. The few Freds that are too dumb to do that will simply be out-competed and will end up being nothing more than rounding error in the numbers.
> Seems to me there would be a lot of deadbeat outlaws.
Not if it turns out that being a deadbeat outlaw means no one will contract with you, so you end up being poor while everyone else is getting rich by reaping the benefits of cooperation, specialization, and trade.
In other words, you're implicitly assuming that, absent government coercion, people have no incentive to actually be trustworthy cooperators. But that's not the case. In the kind of libertarian society envisioned in, for example, The Machinery Of Freedom, being a trustworthy cooperator would be an obvious benefit--or, to turn that around, *not* being a trustworthy cooperator would be an obvious hindrance. Yes, there would still be rare people who are able to make a living without having to be trustworthy cooperators--by running various con games, for example, picking their marks carefully--but they'll be rare.
By contrast, in our current societies that have governments, being a trustworthy cooperator can be beneficial up to a point, but your gains from that are always at the mercy of the government's ability to coerce. As the saying goes, no man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. And in our current societies that have governments, there are many *more* ways that people can benefit from *not* being trustworthy cooperators, by figuring out how to use the government's coercive powers for their own personal advantage.
What if Ellen’s insurance status changed after the contract was signed?
All these schemes assume people behave rationally. They don’t. That’s why we have criminals and contract disputes. They also assume all these agencies care about their customers. They don’t. One of the schemes I saw, I think on Mises,org, even wanted his minarchy constitution to explicitly call out slave farms and factories where the deadbeat outlaws would work off their debt. They would be treated kindly to get maximum work out of them, rehabilitated and reformed by the experience, and they would be released when their debt was paid off with a clean bill of health.
David’s description is far more rational than that nonsense! The guy couldn’t even see the most obvious major hole, that any agency which couldn’t find the real criminal could just point the finger at any of the numerous outlaws, turn him into a debt slave, and he could do nothing about it. They’d sure get their restitution, but it wouldn’t be from the real criminal.
My main gripe with all these protection racket schemes is their lack of faith in individuals. They push all this justice onto a few big box agencies arbitrating as third parties who don’t actually give a hoot about their clients. You claim that Fred or Ellen or whoever (substack’s interface sucks and I can’t go look it up right now) could handle her case herself. No, she couldn’t, not in any practical sense, because if she doesn’t do what the big box agency wants, the alternatiive is war, and she will lose or be dead, without recourse. Remember, war is always the ultimate alternative, and might definitely makes right. Public reputation be damned; the big box agencies will all be so similar that the last thing they will do is take an individual’s side against a fellow big box agency.
I have dealt with insurance companies, and they do not care. One accident involved three cars (I was number three) playing bumper bounce at about 10 mph with no real damage, and the first two claimed $2000 whiplash damage for them and their husbands. When I told the adjuster that both were solo drivers and they were lying, her attitude was too bad, so sad, it’s too small to pursue.
Protection rackets won’t care either, since all their laws are going to coalesce into the same overall set. There are three major cell phone carriers in the US. They have their differences, but if all customers were randomly reassigned daily to different carriers, very few would notice any difference in call quality.
Same with major ISPs. My small rural ISPs have all been bought out by big ISPs, and they don’t care either. This idea of thousands of small boutique protection agencies is pure fantasy.
> Carol's agency hates drinkers, Doug's agency mandates a morning whiskey. If Carol sees Doug drinking in public, she wants her agency to sue Doug. Doug countersues for breaking his agency's law. No compromise is possible.
You're assuming that everyone will be able to find some agency that will be willing to defend their personal preferences, no matter how idiosyncratic. That's not a realistic assumption.
What I would expect to happen in the cases described above is that Carol and Doug won't be able to find any agencies at all that are willing to enforce their idiosyncratic preferences, so if Carol wants to stop Doug from drinking, and Doug wants to force Carol to drink, they're going to have to do it using only their own resources, with no agency to back them up. Which of course means both of them will just grumble in private about how the other is a strange person, and nothing more will actually happen.
Yes, exactly. But that’s part of my gripe with calling this scheme “private law”. I realize it means not public law created by governments, but most people take it to mean personal law, custom law, bespoke law, writing your own laws, as if buying a custom tailored suit or sewing your own clothes. The reality is getting corporate law, like choosing between Target and Walmart, and all the impedance matching means they will all devolve into such similar sets of laws that the only thing the agencies will negotiate over is 3rd degree larceny vs 2nd degree burglary.
It’s corporate big box law, not private law, and indistinguishable from government once all is said and done.
> Part of the problem is conflating "anarchy" and "chaos".
That might well be because, historically speaking, the people who call themselves "anarchist" and actually make the news are the ones who are promoting chaos: to them, "anarchy" means "tear down the existing governments" without giving any thought to what would replace them or whether it might be a good idea to take that process slowly because so many people have organized their lives in good faith around our existing government systems. I prefer to not even use the term "anarchy" because of those connotations; but unfortunately we don't have a good neutral term for what "anarchy" actually means to those of us who are using the concept embodied in, for example, The Machinery of Freedom.
I realized "anarchy" was a confused word the first time I read of an Anarchists Union fighting on the Marxist side of the Spanish Civil War. Then I found out their heretical word was "property", and they didn't just means the means of production, or even housing, cars, and so on; the real nutters claimed no property at all, down to shared underwear and toothbrushes.
"Capitalism" is also a confused word.
One of the suggested replacements for "anarcho-capitalism" is "market anarchy" which doesn't really help. "Laissez-faire" has been rendered useless too. But I don't think it would matter if a better term came along. People are scared to death of life without government telling them what is allowed and what is mandated.
I'm a long-term optimist and short-term pessimist. I don't believe anything can stop the US's slide into socialism run by despots. But I do believe the result will blow up and revive the 1775 urge to get rid of oppressive governments, and maybe the second draft of a US constitution will provide better ways of controlling government.
I wrote the following elsewhere.
The problem lies not in creating a government which can be reined in; current governments could be reined in if people had the time to take the trouble. But honest people have far too many of their own concerns to control the parasites whose very survival depends on stealing other people's taxes, and whose job satisfaction stems from pushing people around.
There has to be a complete reversal of roles, where the parasites are the ones begging from working people, instead of working people wondering what the parasites are up to behind closed government doors. Make free rides so difficult that begging is preferable, if not honest work. Government must not be able to define its own limits or steal its own funding. We, the people, must have that control, and it must be individualized, just as in any marketplace.
Agreed on all points, save I don't think anarchy will necessarily generate gangs that turn into governments, so much as private firms will grow to the point that they are basically small governments. In much the same way as one can conceivably have more "god and everything" stores than just Wal Mart and Target (and Fleet Farm if you cut out the grocery section) but in practice almost everywhere has one of those two stores, I think most places will have but one or two de facto governments running the place. Which probably isn't bad, as the corporations that are doing so will probably be doing so precisely because they are really good at it compared to everyone else. To the Martian viewer the result would probably look a lot like having thousands of tiny kingdoms and such, but the underlying dynamics will function much better.
I tend to think that government of some sort is just too entrenched in human behavior, but there are vast gains from better (and smaller) governments over worse ones.
I hope your "private firms" aren't what some call "protection rackets" and others call security agencies, protection agencies, private law, and so on: merged insurance agencies and police departments. Those strike me as some of the most bizarre libertarian / anarchist theories I can imagine.
* Everyone who has dealt with insurance agencies knows they don't give a fig about their customers, only about resolving disputes to their own benefit. Everyone who reads the news knows that good cops don't turn in bad cops, and they don't give a fig about justice. Combining the two has got to be someone's troll.
* The rationale for private law is not negotiable differences in 3rd degree larceny vs 2nd degree burglary, but to enforce contraband and taboo and morality choices, where there can be no negotiated compromise. Imagine MADD and DAMM clients disputing someone drinking in public, or "contraceptives-are-a-mortal-sin" vs "abortion-til-after-birth" disputing pre-marital sex.
* No one can tell someone's agency or private laws without asking for IDs. Radio and TV stations, magazines, stores, bars, restaurants, every business open to the public will do something to offend somebody and violate their agency's laws.
* The ultimate threat of literal war between agencies means might makes right. Small custom agencies will never survive, and the remaining agencies will all have minor variations on the same set of "standard" laws. At least MADD vs DAMM and "no-contraceptives" vs "abortion-forever" wars will be impossible, but it makes a joke of the claim of allowing private laws.
* The idea that protection agencies will remain virtual instead of territorial makes no sense in light of so many incompatible morality laws. They will become territorial sooner or later just to reduce conflicts.
All protection rackets do is recreate government, and poorly.
My ultimate conclusion is that too many smart libertarians and anarchists think they are viable, so either we have differing opinions of what "individualism" means, or my reading comprehension is piss poor.
I couldn't find any passage in your books even vaguely similar to the general discussion of private law which I remember with the (para)phrase "more honestly known as protection rackets", so I edited that comment. I'm going to have to remember harder.
I only have three of your eBooks, and only found "protection racket" in The Machinery of Freedom, chapter 30 "The Stability Problem", first paragraph, and not even close to what I remember, not even the right context.
I'll keep looking. Might have to buy some more eBooks. My physical books are elsewhere right now.
I am agnostic on the form they are most likely to take, and indeed suspect that many different forms will develop in different places based on culture and local convenience. Some places might see more of a common law with paid private arbitrators/judges (sort of like Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" idea). Some places might see something more like the local Icelandic lords Dr Friedman described in "Law's Order". Others might follow an owned resort style, where someone has a lot of land and leases it to others with conditions on behavior. Maybe some will be religious communities. Probably some will be gangs, stationary bandit type domains.
I just don't think that pure anarchy is long term stable, and humans will tend to create basically very small, localized governments. (Localized might not be quite the word, but I suspect that people will tend to sort by general proximity as it is easier to know what to expect etc.)
Note though too that I didn't say things would be great, just I suspect better than they are now, possibly closer to optimality in what humans can actually achieve than we are now by a wide margin. Maybe not though.
But the Amish are happy to let non-Amish taxpayers pay to maintain their roads and provide innumerable other services. They permanently banish the children who won't drink the Kool Aid. And don't get me started on the puppy mills.
The decision whether to agree to an Amish community's Meidung is made as an adult — the restrictions don't apply before that, although of course Amish parents, like other parents, have some control over their children. Teenagers commonly do things that would not be permitted to them as adults, assuming they decided to be part of the community.
No, I assume that everyone is aware of this. Puppy mills are, essentially, industrial breeding facilities for dogs, which are kept in inhumane conditions. The females are mostly kept in cages and sometimes never set foot on the ground. There is no attention paid to genetic diversity so many of the puppies are inbred and afflicted with genetic conditions. Puppy mills are ostensibly illegal but seldom get shut down. Fortunately, fewer and fewer pet stores buy from Puppy mills.
I'm not aware of any roads built by the Amish. I don't think they built or maintain the Lincoln Highway for instance. Lancaster and surrounding counties are heavily subsidized by the rest of the state, mainly SE Pennsylvania suburbs.
Ever spend time on a large farm? There are many roads thereon.
And why would they have built Rt 30?
Lancaster is in the top 20% of American cities by size. What evidence do you have that and surrounding counties are "heavily subsidized by the rest of the state, mainly SE Pennsylvania suburbs"?
The problem with such a stark declaration is that US federal and state governments meddle so much in so many ways which would work fine in the private sector that trying to untangle the indirect subsidies is impossible.
Do they? What exactly does that mean, anyway? If you mean the courts and police, the Amish don't really have much choice, nor does anyone. I don't know what the Amish attitude is towards guns and self-defense.
There was a controversial case a year or two ago in which an Amish farmer had his large gun collection seized by feds because he sold one gun and they said he was a dealer and needed an FFL. His attorney wrote it up on his podcast channel, vivabarneslaw.locals.com .
> Do they? What exactly does that mean, anyway? If you mean the courts and police, the Amish don't really have much choice, nor does anyone.
True. If you asked the Amish, their "official" answer would be to deny they need or want the protection. However, without the protection, or the protection of some stationary bandits, their lifestyle wouldn't be possible as they'd get robbed by roving bandits.
> I don't know what the Amish attitude is towards guns and self-defense.
I believe the usual Amish policy is not to report crimes against themselves to the police, which is as far as they can go towards denying the protection.
In any case, Amish pay the taxes that fund the police just as other people do. The tax they do not pay is Social Security — and they don't collect it. They pay the taxes that fund the schools, make less use of them than other people.
"The solution to that problem was provided to him [Wolff] by one of the student revolutionaries, one he thought was almost certainly a communist, who told him that he did not need a philosophical derivation of ethics. All he needed was to decide which side he was on."
What that says is that might makes right. Very modern conception, or at least, implementation. In addition, moreover, one must not be too understanding of the contemporary Left. I don't think we are dealing with the old European social democrats, who I could talk with.
Seems to me the contemporary Left is not thinking about consequences for all people, or even lots of people. They are thinking only of consequences for themselves, a fairly small slice of society, envious to be sure, and helmed by a revolutionary guard bent on fomenting chaos.
I do not see any attempt to try to understand the evolved social and economic system, nor to appreciate any facts.
The modern leftists baffled me until I read something recent that their ideology is based on oppressors vs the oppressed, and so many relatively rich kids who feel guilty about having it so good that they feel they have to atone for that accident of fate by tearing down everything which created their white privilege oppressor status.
I don't know enough of them to know how accurate that is for how many of them, and I don;t want to. But it's the most plausible explanation I've seen for bizarre stuff like Queers For Palestine, the 1619 history nonsense, and cancel culture.
> their ideology is based on oppressors vs the oppressed
And on those being the *only* possible categories. Which of course leaves out the majority (if not the vast majority) of actual human interactions. When you insist on only carrying a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
> It did not seem to occur to him that I, or anyone, might disagree about the relevant facts, that the argument might be not about what outcomes we wanted but about how to get them
Once you notice this failure mode, you see it everywhere. The world is full of people who seem to think that their opponents are in full agreement with them about the negative consequences of some policy, and that their opponents are simply in favor of negative consequences. It seems like some people literally can't imagine that other people believe different facts than them, but find it easy to imagine that other people are evil. Here are some recent examples that I have come across:
- Economic leftists tend to assume that anyone who opposes taxing the rich must have some vain hope of becoming rich themselves someday. It doesn't occur to them that someone could believe taxes past some point might harm the economy, or that the rich might genuinely deserve their wealth.
- Opponents of "gender affirming care" seem incapable of imagining that anyone would believe that some minors benefit from such care. They assume that their opponents must agree with them that such treatments are harmful to minors, but are pretending not to for some sinister reason.
- Opponents of increased immigration do not seem capable of conceiving that anyone would think immigration benefits the receiving country. They assume their opponents just like foreigners more than natives for some bizarre reason.
I oppose child genital mutilation because it is almost always the result of children being brainwashed by woke teachers. I base this not on anecdotal stories, but by the behaviors of its proponents:
Several states have made it criminal child endangerment for parents to not use a child's preferred pronouns. Denying genital mutilation surgery on top of it is beyond the pale.
Several states have made it illegal for teachers to tell parents about their children's preferred pronouns or name changes, even if the parents expressly ask.
It used to be dogma that homosexuality was genetic and immutable. This was the basis for outlawing gay conversion therapy, even voluntary. Now dogma is that there are 57 genders which can be changed on a whim.
It used to be dogma that African tribal female genital mutilation was the sin of all sins, and chemical castration was so evil that even convicted pedophile rapists could not undergo it. Now it is dogma that teachers can discover what their student's true gender is and recommend them for the same surgery and chemical castration, all without their parents' permission.
Children are distinct from adults in not having the maturity to sign contracts, to join the military, to smoke tobacco or drink alcohol or do drugs, dance topless or nude, buy guns, and many many other adult behaviors. Yet now we are expected to believe that 2-year-olds can make irreversible decisions about genital mutilation surgery and chemical castration, against their parents' wishes.
It used to be dogma that men and women were physically distinct, and thus was born Title IX mandating separate men's and women's sports. Now it is dogma that men who identify as women must be allowed in women's locker rooms, to shower and change with the women, and to compete with them. Why not just repeal Title IX? What use does it serve?
Why do we see stories about drag queens who insist on their right to read to little children, to put on drag shows for them which include kids stuffing money in their underwear? Why do we never hear of them in rest homes or hospitals? What is their obsession with reading only to little children? I don't care if it is only one in a thousand; when good cops don't turn in bad cops, they are no longer good cops. When good drag queens don't object to the bad drag queens, they are no longer good drag queens.
No, not at all. But the consequences of circumcision are slight compared to transgender surgery and chemical castration.
I suppose I should have said that I don't include circumcision in "genital mutilation" even if it is, technically. It's like "shooting victim". Trump got a bandaid on an ear. JFK died.
It is, however, by far the most common form of genital mutilation in our society and thinking about your view of it is a possible test of your view of other forms.
While circumcision is significantly more common—roughly 100,000 circumcisions for every 1 gender "mutilation" (as you call it) performed on minors—the psychological stakes differ greatly. Approximately 4,000 minors in the U.S. die by suicide annually, and research clearly shows that minors experiencing gender dysphoria have substantially higher suicide attempt rates compared to their cisgender peers. No reputable evidence suggests irreversible genital surgery is being conducted on two-year-old's absent medical necessity.
Suppose that the suicide rate is 1/10,000 minors per year, very roughly consistent with your numbers, and twice that for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. A sex change operation then reduces the chance of suicide by .0001, which is a pretty small gain relative to other effects of the operation, such as the inability to father or bear children.
Also, you have not offered any figure on suicide rates after sex change.
Do you have suicide statistics after transgender surgery? Your statistic is meaningless without anything to compare it with. And what does "minor" mean -- does it include 19-year-olds, for instance, as many news reports like to say for "Police shoot teenager"? 4000 suicides is 4000 too many, but there are roughly 50,000 suicides every year, and if "minor" includes, say, everyone below 18, that's 1/5 the expected life expectancy but 1/12 the total suicides, which makes it 2.5 times better than normal for a back of the envelope comparison.
"Now dogma is that there are 57 genders which can be changed on a whim."
That is not a correct description of the dogma you are attacking. The claim is not that gender can be changed on a whim, it is that gender is not fully determined by XX/XY genetics with the result that some people are born with a different gender than implied by genetics and genitals and will be better off if their body is altered to fit their true gender. If they could change gender on a whim they could change their gender to fit their body, which would be a lot easier and less expensive.
It is easy to make people you disagree with look stupid if you get to invent bad arguments for them instead of dealing with the arguments they actually make.
Similarly, talking about two year olds choosing chemical castration may make you feel good but unless you actually have evidence of puberty blockers being given to two year olds it only makes reader less willing to take you seriously.
Very much along the same lines that you offer for not taking the people you argue with seriously.
My "57" is ordinary Joe Isuzu hyperbole, but one need only look at official pronoun lists to see the concept originated with them, not me. What is not hyperbole is that some of these wokidiots have claimed they can change gender on a whim. "Gender fluidity" is their term, not mine. As far as I know, no one has ever suggested "gender staticky" as a valid concept.
As for giving puberty blockers to two year olds, it is NOT a joke or a lie that some wokidiots have said that two year olds are capable of deciding their gender, and considering how several states have made it criminal child abuse for parents to not "affirm" their children's pronouns and need for "affirmative" surgery, it is not much of a stretch at all to imagine the wokidiots pushing it on two year olds at some point.
They've gone from "genetically determined so gay conversion theory is evil and so are female genital mutilation and voluntary chemical castration for pediphiles" to "teachers can recommend chemical castration and genital mutilation surgery and parents go to jail for opposing it" in just ten years. It is not at all far-fetched to think what would be "moral" in another ten years.
There is a large difference between "it is not much of a stretch at all to imagine" someone doing something at some point and claiming that it is actually happening or that people are actually arguing for it. You are getting outraged at extrapolated excesses from your imagination. I also enjoy self-righteousness but try to avoid indulging that taste — it is a dangerous drug.
If you don't see the problem, think about how you react to people on the left talking about Trump putting left-wingers in concentration camps. They too are extrapolating.
I extrapolated from the trend of wokism over the last 10 years. Every extrapolation I have seen regarding Trump and dictatorship, concentration camps, and so on has been based on the same outrage that calls him literally Hitler, a real Nazi, and so on. If I were extrapolating on that level, I would have called them Dr Mengele long ago.
This popped up today. I did not dream up this gender fluid nonsense.
"A young poet pretended to be ‘a gender-fluid member of the Nigerian diaspora,’ and wrote intentionally bad poems. He says he got 47 of them published."
So I'm going to slightly defend child genital mutilation from two aspects that weren't mentioned by others here while up front stating I agree with your overall point that I find it's average proponent to be a hypocrite given their dogma changes with the wind; like people's who for years arguing abortion was ok as long as it was before the point of viability but then as the point moved farther and farther near the point of conception (conceivable in the near future) all of a sudden magically it's not about non-viability, i.e. they never believed that in the first place, it was just a cop out. I'm also not going to dig into one of them as my view on it are well known on here and other places where many commenters here frequent on it. On the genital mutilation front, the point nobody here pointed out is how the pro-circumcision crowd (female AND male) are generally on opposites sides of the pro-tranny crowd and to such a level they can't even form a bootleggers and Baptist coalition though objectively they both want the same physical right hence why it's all BS to your point on both sides if you are approaching it from a non-religious aspect.
The first one, which I'm not going to rehash, is you have to have a belief children have any rights at all. If you don't, and I don't as I don't think it's ethically defensible any more than animal rights or plant rights, then parents are free to whatever they wish to their property, genital mutilation and all. Sure that sucks for some kids but most kids will turn out fine as that was the norm for most of human history anyways.
The second one is we need to have a talk about the word harm and what that actually means and that is specific to the specific procedure, it's not all the same which is what people try and reduce this argument too (which is fair if you believe in absolutely bodily autonomy but very few people do, especially for children; but if that is your hill, I'll support you on that one).
For example 81% of all American men have been "genitally mutilated" as Dan Savage and his ilk like to push yet most of us turned out fine and when we didn't, it probably wasn't a result of male circumcision. Likewise the objectively net positive benefits of male circumcision aren't in dispute hence the reason it's often recommended for adults whose parents were dumb enough to not do it for them, the equiv of anti-vaxers. It reduces your chances of getting HIV to effectively zero as an inserting partner only, it vastly reduces penile cancer, it's better for men's mental health (though this is more because of teasing and self confidence), and especially among people with mobility issues or demented (i.e. senior citizens with Alzheimer's) as it prevents serious infections which can, AND DOES, kill them due to the extra maintenance requirements. The amount of harm prevent by male circumcision vastly outweighs the harm even in the most wild liberally aggressive stats Mr. Savage wants to fabricate, I mean quote.
Likewise female circumcision which has none of the positives outside self esteem, you still have to weight the harms and in that case, the specific implementation. Some tribes remove the entire external clitoris (though they can still orgasm) whereas others just do a symbolic "nic" of the labia. If you are a child rights sort of person there is probably a case for banning the former but not the latter which is the equivalent of tattoo, scarring, or piercings. Sex change operations when it's non-obvious (i.e. external obvious hermaphrodite at birth) is a challenge because it's permanent but then again, you have to determine the harm or not and if it's culturally induced (i.e. we are victimizing them) or actual biological harm. Also don't forget the 85% of women whom have had their ears permanently mutilated as children by their mothers. Harm is what matters here, or should, not the ick factor.
I can respect the no rights camp and I can respect the bodily autonomy camp but I can't respect the icky camp. And honestly I can't respect the harm camp either in practice because lets face it, nobody really cares about actual harm to children, it's just a mask for the ick people.
Quite a spiel, and I have no idea of the medical or health benefits, other than taking your word for it until something more definitive comes along, such as resorting to Wikipedia.
But I will argue about children having rights and not just being parental property. I'm pretty sure you don't include murder in your parental rights over children, or rape, or, getting closer to home, amputating an arm so they can get a role in a remake of the fugitive, and I'm pretty sure you'd consider it a crime for a parent to push their kid off a balcony if he identified as Superman.
I know almost nothing about the mechanics of female circumcision or even female genital mutilation when it was such a horrible crime 10 years ago. But male circumcision is nothing like chemical castration or transition surgery in either direction. The transition proponents like to trot out Jewish circumcision as an example of why transition surgery is no big deal, and that is just another example of their hypocrisy and untrustworthiness.
100% agree with your last point in that the entire argument is basically disengious by the transition people.
Just for the record though ,"I'm pretty sure you don't include murder in your parental rights over children, or rape, or, getting closer to home, amputating an arm so they can get a role in a remake of the fugitive, and I'm pretty sure you'd consider it a crime for a parent to push their kid off a balcony if he identified as Superman", I do. Children until emancipated are property, just like animals, just like the garbage I just threw away. I am 100% a pater familias person, i.e. absolute parental rights. I'm not a humanist, rights apply to full members of society.
To tie that back to your point above, there is absolutely no moral difference besides iky'ness between a first trimester abortion and a sixtieth trimester abortion as either you can kill your kids at whim or you can't. It's why I find pro-abortion people to be hypocrites even worse than pro-trans people.
Ah well, we part ways on children being mere property. My opinion is that they are real people, but too immature to make some decisions for themselves. The more they mature, they more decisions they can make for themselves, and at some point, they realize they're making all their own decisions and are adults.
Every animal tries its best to help its children grow to adulthood. Amoeba don't divide unless there's sufficient food. Turtles and other reptiles / whatever bury their eggs to protect them. The only infanticide I am aware of is primitive tribes who can't afford the unproductive extra mouths to feed of twins, cripples, or incapacitated elders. I also know that some male lions and chimpanzees kill the remaining offspring of new mates, presumably to rid the world of the new mate's prior mate and to focus her resources on his new offspring, and I can at least understand it even if I don't like it.
Killing children just ... because? No, I don't buy it. As I understand it, paterfamilias were also expected to strangle females of the household who had had the temerity to allow themselves to be raped. Whether that was children only, or included sisters and mothers, I do not know.
The only problem with treating children as real humans is the wrongness of treating birth as some magical moment which endows them with humanness. The Japanese counted years since New Year's Day for age, maybe others did too, but as far as I know, most societies celebrate birth days, not conception days. Logically, if I don't think birth is magical, I ought to be anti-abortion, but not being a woman, I have never had to face that dilemma. The most I will say publicly is that I think anti-abortion laws are unenforceable, and I despise unenforceable laws.
I replied to a different comment on this subject, and have to slightly amend this comment. It's my personal opinion only, albeit I think shared by the vast majority of people in some degree. I think most non-wokies tolerate spanking, for instance, and other minor corporal punishment, as none of their business, even if they find it distasteful or disgusting. I think very few would go to the extreme of tolerating murder, rape, torture, or other extremes, as shown by the widespread revulsion of genital mutilation surgery.
Let me try to walk you through some of the opposing positions and show you how they seem entirely reasonable if you believe somewhat different facts:
- Firstly, most proponents tend to agree with you up to a point about surgery on genitals. Generally surgery on genitals is recommended to be postponed until adulthood or late teens. It is not normally performed on small children. I have heard of examples of breast reductions being performed before adulthood, but breast reductions are already performed on teenage girls for non-gender related reasons like gigantomastia, and no one seems to have an issue with that.
- To a proponent of gender affirming care, what matters is choice. People deserve to have the kind of genitals they want. Whether something is surgery or "mutilation" is determined by what the subject of the surgery wants and what will allow them to live a good life. African-style genital mutilation is a terrible crime because it is designed to make women's lives worse in order to make them more appealing to men, not just because it involves performing surgery on body parts. If performing surgery to make a body part different than what it naturally would be is "mutilation," them fixing a cleft palate or amputating a vestigial tail would be mutilation.
Don't you already agree with the other side that different genitals are good for different people? If you think that surgically converting a penis into a vagina is "mutilation," do you also think that all women are born mutilated by nature, since they have naturally occurring vaginas? Of course you don't! You understand that different genitals are good for different people. Is it that hard to imagine someone going one step further and concluding that there is some tiny minority of people whose natural genitals aren't good for them?
- The problem with arguments that puberty blockers and hormonal treatments are "irreversible" is that going through natural puberty is also irreversible. I don't think anyone disagrees with you that it would be better if there was some way to postpone decisions until the people in question had fully developed adult minds. But that isn't always possible.
I'm not going further down on your arguments because I'm not trying to change your mind on the issue. I actually agree with you that some large percentage of young transitioners are probably hypochondriacs who have convinced themselves they have gender dysphoria, and that much tougher screening is needed. What I am trying to do is show you how, with slightly different assumptions about the facts, their views sound eminently reasonable and human.
I've said why I don't believe proponents of genital mutilation have any principles:
* Their positions now and 10-15 years ago are diametrically opposed.
* Their secrecy with regards to teachers and parents show they are afraid of contrary opinions and think teachers have more rights than parents when it comes to children.
* They think children are too immature to handle such temporary things as drinking, smoking, and drugs, yet mature enough for irreversible decisions like mutilating their genitals.
I trust nothing from genital mutilation proponents except to continue being hypocrites. I put no stock in any of their arguments. And considering how their professed "beliefs" have reversed in the last 10 years, I see no reason to expect their "beliefs" to be anywhere near the same 10 years from now.
You seem misinformed. LGBT activists do not appear to me to have changed their messaging about whether someone is "born that way." They seem to think that people are innately trans and have been since birth or early childhood. They certainly do not think you can choose your gender. They think all the however-many genders they say there are this week are a naturally occurring part of human variation, not something someone they made up. I'm skeptical of this, but it's consistant.
I think what might be going on is that since you think the extra genders are made up, you assume they do too. Like David said in the OP, it's sometimes hard to imagine other people believing different facts.
The secrecy can be explained by paranoia. Teachers are afraid (sometimes correctly, although their fears are probably exaggerated) that parents who find out their children are trans might hurt them. The reason for secrecy is motivated by concern for the child's welfare and rights, not a belief that teachers have more rights than parents.
They exercise crimestop when their beliefs contradict observable reality. Kind of like who the feminists knew enough not to ask why there were separate men's and women's leagues until the tranies called their bluff.
"Don't you already agree with the other side that different genitals are good for different people? If you think that surgically converting a penis into a vagina is "mutilation," do you also think that all women are born mutilated by nature, since they have naturally occurring vaginas?"
That would be a good argument if we really had the technology to convert a man to a woman, but we don't.
Well, it would only be a good argument if we believed that young children should be able to undergo such procedures.
And that parents should be allowed unlimited leeway with their children to approve of such (let alone that young children should be able to decide this for themselves).
I sincerely doubt ANYONE believes the latter, at least for young enough children.
Because I have yet to meet or hear of a single person, no matter how leftist, who believes parents should have the right to unlimited beatings of their children.
So the leftist argument here may well have some credence if we are talking about 16 or 17 year olds, but it is immoral and non-reasoned contradictions when it involves younger children.
The person whose argument I was responding to already wrote: "Generally surgery on genitals is recommended to be postponed until adulthood or late teens." His argument is not about such surgery on children.
Peter elsewhere in these comments thinks of children as pure property, to the point that parents should have the leeway to kill or mistreat their children for any reason. I'm paraphrasing, probably badly.
> To a proponent of gender affirming care, what matters is choice.
But whose choice? And on what basis?
What I see when I see "gender affirming care" is something like this: here's a child who has, say, XY chromosomes and male biological development, but who likes to play with dolls and wear dresses, say. And the adults around him tell him that means he's really a girl and needs "gender affirming care" to be healthy. Is that the child's choice? Or the adults' choice? What if the adults just said, sure, it's perfectly okay to be who you are in the body you're in and choose to play with dolls and wear dresses? Would the child still think they needed something to "fix" their body? Or would they choose to keep the body they have as long as they're allowed to choose to do the things they like to do?
The problem is that we don't know the answer to that question, because nobody ever gave the child the option of just being okay with the way they were in the first place. Nobody ever even told them it was possible for it to be perfectly okay to have XY chromosomes and male development and like to play with dolls and wear dresses. So they never had a choice. They just had to take the consequences of the choices the adults around them made.
"The problem is that we don't know the answer to that question, because nobody ever gave the child the option of just being okay with the way they were in the first place. "
Are you saying that no boy has ever been allowed to grow up with interests more common with girls? Sex change operations are a recent development, effeminate men are not.
> Are you saying that no boy has ever been allowed to grow up with interests more common with girls?
No. But boys who have been allowed to do that are not going to be subjected to "gender affirming care" by their parents or other adults. They're going to be allowed to be who they are in the body they were born with. Those boys and their parents are not who my comment was talking about.
Your comment was that we do not know the answer. We can't know the answer for that particular boy but we have information from the experience of other boys.
Would you say that we don't know the effect of any medical treatment, an antibiotic or vaccine, because we don't have evidence in advance on what would happen to that patient without it? That seems the equivalent to what you are saying.
And by every other legal comparison, children are too immature to ever make that choice. To allow them the choice of irreversible genital mutilation, but not to experiment with alcohol or tobacco even a little, is nonsensical. The hypocrisy on that alone is enough to distrust every single thing they claim.
Whether you distrust the person who makes an argument is irrelevant to whether the argument itself is correct. Argumentum ad hominem is a fallacy. If someone dishonest says that 2+2=4 it is still true.
Probably most things most people say are true. It's cloudy today. It's a long way to Tipperary.
But when someone has a track record of hypocrisy and nonsense on any particular subject, I don't trust them on anything else they say about that subject.
This is the same as impeaching a witness in court, except they have impeached themselves.
But do you believe the proponents of both free immigration and medical transitioning support those policies because they genuinely believe that the benefits outweigh the costs, or do you think they believe they actual prefer the negative outcomes that you think are the most likely to happen?
You didn't ask me, but I will offer this possibility when it comes to transitioning kids: those who support it think the benefits outweigh the costs because they don't experience the costs and get tremendous benefits from virtue signaling. The aftermath of what happens to transitioned kids is ignored; everyone cheers and claps when it happens then the kids are ignored afterwards in favor of the next in line, while those who deeply regret it later are screamed down.
Yep, you just summed up pretty much all laws meant to "protect the children" quite well. I remember over on Volokh Conspiracy there was a conversation about the recent Texas porn age verification case and someone quite rightly asked "What exactly are you protecting the seventeen year old man from who both wants the porn and is already legally sexual active. Did anyone ask him, you know, the 'victim'". We really need to redo most "child" laws one day and realize a 17 year old isn't a infant, nor is an eight year old.
Sorry, were you responding to me? I am not sure if I am not understanding how your comment relates, or seeing it from the wrong angle. I think the connection is that if we don't actually account for the harm to the victim, or even ask them about it, we are going to screw up the law, making things that are not very harmful too illegal and things that are very harmful too legal. I am only starting on my morning coffee so I am not sure :)
I should expand on "the woke brigade has no principles". I base that on all the dogma changes over the last 10-15 years concerning genital mutilation, chemical castration, and men in women's sports. I frankly do not believe that any rational person can actually believe that men belong in women's sports. The disparity in muscle mass doesn't suddenly disappear just because some opportunistic 3rd-rate male athlete proclaims himself to be a women. Putting tampons in grade school boys bathrooms is virtue signalling. Letting male boxers beat up women boxers is virtue signalling.
One of the results of having principles is consistency. The woke brigade's only consistency is having no principles.
When push comes to shove, anyone who disagrees with them is an oppressor, because supporting oppressors.
In that sense alone, they are very similar to how we “normies” who care at least some amount about civilization vs. barbarism treat (actual) terrorists and terrorist supporters.
P.S. if actually interested, go read up on “intersectionality”. It describes 95%+ of how they determine who is “oppressed”. It is most definitely a rich westerner in Christian heritage countries lens used for said definition, which is part of how it can incorporate Muslims and even Islamists.
I believe the woke brigade has no principles and don't believe anything but what their "leaders" tell them. I don't believe they have ever thought the issue through. I believe that all anyone would get from asking them would be ranting and screaming and a rush to cancel their inquisitor.
I believe most open boarders have bought into the oppressed-oppressor ideology, and while most probably do just think of the (foreign immigrant) children, as with Obama and his dreamers, the real rabble rousers want to disrupt current society, just as the Free Speech Movement and the anti-Vietnam War protestors of the 1960s were led by people who hated the system and wanted to disrupt it at least, and some wanted to destroy it, but none of them had given any coherent thought to what practical reality could replace it.
Some people suggest these rabble rousers feel guilty about their luxury white-privilege oppressor upbringing and want to atone for it by leading the oppressed to freedom. It may or may not have some truth to it, but I don't think it matters in the end.
I would add that most people don't make the distinction inside their arguments (or apparently their heads) of the open borders vs boarders aspect, and so assume that new immigrants will assimilate to the new culture as immigrants in the past did, i.e. when laws were still enforced.
Recent events seem to support that assumption. There was a fear for a long time that immigrants akd their descendants, especially non-white ones, would permanently support left-wing politicians (similar to how African Americans have overwhelmingly voted Democrat for several decades). The last few elections indicate this is not happening. Trump and other right-wing politicians have picked up increasing shares of those demographics. Any left-wing bias those communities have appears to be temporary and soon fades. The idea that an influx of immigrants would turn America into a left-wing one-party state has been discredited.
In spite of this revelation, I don't see Democrats or Republicans significantly shifting their views on immigration. This is evidence that those views were always sincere and not instrumental. Democrats are pro-immigration because they sincerely believe immigration is good, not as a cynical ploy to get new voters. Republicans are anti-immigration out of similar convictions.
I don't think that "the idea that an influx of immigrants would turn America into a left-wing one-party state has been discredited," or that the assumption that immigrants assimilate to the host culture is supported by recent events at all. You cite changing voting patterns, but blacks are hardly immigrants, and the swing hasn't been huge; it isn't as though blacks are 50/50 voting between the two parties. Likewise Hispanics, although there the proportion of more recent immigrants is higher.
Further, it isn't at all clear that the changes in voting patterns haven't been of a more obvious causal set, the obviously awful state of cities run by democrats and the exaltation of deviant behaviors. Democrats (the party) going way off the crazy end of the scale and alienating voters shouldn't be taken as evidence that the voters themselves changed.
Of course assimilation isn't just whether or not immigrants vote D and R is similar ratios. Culture has a lot more to it than that.
Immigration proponents do not distinguish between open borders (anyone but the sick and criminal can come in and they are on their own, pre-1900 style) and open boarders, where government entices the lazy and criminal with room and board, cash, health care, and other assorted welfare. They also fly in refugees who don't particularly want to go to the US, they have no choice in where the end up, neither do the locals, and when they get here, they hate the place.
Proponents also refuse to admit the culture clash is a real problem, as with the British Pakistani rape scandal, or Omar or one of her squaddies giving speeches about her goal in office is supporting Somalia, not the US, not her district. Dumping 10,000 immigrants on a city of 60,000 is dumb, yet proponents pretend it didn't happen.
“Opponents of ‘gender affirming care’ seem incapable of imagining that anyone would believe that some minors benefit from such care.”
I *really* wanted to “like” your comment, since I mostly agree with the rest of it. But the quoted piece is a false strawman.
I could describe at length, but I will focus solely on the obvious: the phrase “gender affirming care” is a euphemism to assert that irreversible chemical and surgical interventions on children are acceptable medical practices.
THIS in fact is the overwhelming thing most of the “opponents” you cite object to. Not the various other practices that may or may not be incorporated, and may or may not be done well some fraction of the time.
We don’t allow such choices for or about minors in an inordinate number of other areas - smoking cigarettes, or consuming alcohol, to pick two obvious ones. But the leftists in the medical community use that phrase to assert that chemical and surgical procedures on children are perfectly acceptable.
Dude, when we are talking about children, all due respect, it is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT if some - even 49%, even if it were 75% - minors “benefit” from such “care”, even if that could be unequivocally “objectively” determined over each child’s entire lifespan.
It is a complete bastardization of the Hippocratic oath.
"I could describe at length, but I will focus solely on the obvious: the phrase “gender affirming care” is a euphemism to assert that irreversible chemical and surgical interventions on children are acceptable medical practices."
And the fact that he put it in quotation marks means he is using as a label, not asserting that the label is a correct description of what it labels. The usual term for the practice is "scare quotes."
Your response is an argument against the practice but has nothing to do with the point he is making, as should be obvious if you read what he said instead of taking it as a signal that he is a member of the enemy tribe and responding accordingly.
I have a partly written comment on tribalism in my Substack's comment threads and comments on this post are providing multiple examples.
I did not try to address the entirety of his OG comment on opponent objections to “gender affirming care” providing SOME benefit to (some) minors in this specific response; my responses are long enough as it is…
Had I done so, I would have pointed out that those in favor of such “care” could argue - and frequently do - that there are a whole range of interventions covered under that deliberately vague label, some of which I have little doubt provide some benefit to some minors, and for the sake of argument may well provide real benefit to most/all minors.
But this obscures that the most strenuous objections of most “opponents” is to chemical and surgical procedures, and not about all those other aspects under the umbrella “gender affirming care”.
Now it certainly could be the case that *your* seemingly implicit assumption - given your use of the phrase “scare quotes” - that he was referring *solely* to those surgical and chemical procedures with his claim is correct.
But FWIW here I assumed the more expansive definition of the term “gender affirming care” that leftists usually mean when they use that phrase.
I *do* concede that it is very difficult for any of us to know what his meaning/intention was, either in his OG claim, or in his follow-up responses, or even whether his intended meaning of the phrase changed from response to response.
Yet another of the rhetorical “advantages” of the use of such phrases.
It's the irreversibility of it which sets it apart from smoking and alcohol and signing contracts and almost everything else which minors are prohibited from doing.
Further, basing it entirely on what a kid says is the flimsiest possible rationale for any such "care". No one would allow parents to push their kid off the roof if he identifies as Superman, or amputate an arm so he can star in a high school play of The Fugitive.
My point in citing cigarettes and alcohol was mostly in support of another of yours, which is not just society as a whole, but especially these same leftists favor all sorts of those (mostly reversible) restrictions on what minors can do or decide for themselves, but claim that this one is different.
If in fact the argument was coming from “pure” libertarians who believe either children or their parents have absolute rights to do whatever they want to children’s bodies, then it would be a somewhat different argument, mostly a moral one.
But of course I don’t believe that even a single such advocate fits that description.
The problem with the "irreversibility" arguments is that they also apply to normal puberty. It is a process just as irreversible as gender affirming care. The choice isn't between kids going through an irreversible process or not. They're going through one one way or another. The choice is *which* of two irreversible processes they are going to go through, normal puberty or the artificial opposite sex puberty induced by "gender affirming care." Once they've gone through one, it isn't possible to fully go through the other.
The reason that we can tell kids to postpone things like alcohol and cigarettes until later is that there is no downside to the delay. To make it analogous to gender affirming care, you'd have to imagine a situation where that wasn't the case. For example, imagine you discover some kids with a mutant gene that affects how their body processes alcohol, so drinking it makes them sick. However, if they start drinking in moderation at age 12 their body becomes used to alcohol and the mutant gene doesn't activate. In that case you'd have a dilemma where you'd have to choose between people being allowed to drink underage, or being condemned by biology to be lifelong teetotallers.
“The problem with the ‘irreversibility"’ arguments is that they also apply to normal puberty.”
🙄🙄🙄
So you then are violently opposed to abortion, since it is irreversible?
Or you are for late term abortion because “the problem with allowing a child to be born is that it may kill someone else”?
“Gender affirming care” for children is a euphemism for the indefensible.
Your argument is not an argument, it is a tautology.
But I am curious: point blank, yes or no: do you believe in the Hippocratic oath? No hedges, just answer the question.
If no, nothing more to discuss.
If yes, tell me how it POSSIBLY squares with “gender affirming care” - even if for the sake of argument one is confident that said care is the right thing fully 90% of the time?
I readily concede that my abortion position example was fairly weak.
Per my other response, the context does matter. Absent the context, I agree with your critique 100%. Even in context, however, I concur that it was not a particularly good argument.
But please don’t confuse my weak argument here with the idea that I had not closely read his words and their entire context within this page. Whether my interpretation and assumptions match yours or not.
"I readily concede that my abortion position example was fairly weak."
More precisely, it made logical sense only if you had reversed his position, thought he was arguing that one should never do something irreversible when he had actually argued against that claim.
A more plausible explanation of what you wrote was that you interpret all arguments as tribal cheer leading. He rejected an argument made by the right, therefor he was on the left, therefor he could be attacked on any issue you disagreed with the left on whether or not he had said anything about it.
I'm sorry, I do not follow your argument. The Hippocratic Oath doesn't say that doctors should be extremely risk averse or be biased towards inaction.
There is a common medical maxim, "First do no harm," which is often incorrectly attributed to the Hippocratic Oath, but is actually from something else Hippocrates wrote. Generally that maxim is taken to mean that doctors should carefully weigh risks before they do something, not that they should obsessively avoid harm like one of those literal-minded robots from a bad science fiction movie. If you took "First do no harm" literally that wouldn't just prohibit gender affirming care, it would prohibit everything. All medications have some risk of negative side effects and all surgeries carry some risk of injury or death.
Yes, dude, as you clearly understood I was referring to the “First do no harm” core ethical principle of/behind the Hippocratic oath.
And thank you for the sophistry I should have expected from you in responding to that point: jumping to the 99.9999% confidence level strawman rather than the ~96%-99.9% confidence level it is well understood to mean (quite similar to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard we have for criminal trial convictions). 🙄
Which is why I specifically used the 90% confident example. But let me make it easier/harder for you: what if the doctor’s confidence level that it would do this patient no harm was 80%? Should the irreversible surgery still be performed? Your previous answer strongly seems to imply that so long as the confidence was above 51% your answer is yes.
P.S. Separately, I *do* appreciate the education about the phrase not being actually a part of the Hippocratic oath proper.
So to start, this conversation is actually a good idea of what David is talking about in the OP. I didn't realize that your primary focus was on surgery, specifically, because my understanding is that surgeries, especially ones on the genitals are not commonly or routinely performed on minors as part of gender affirming treatments. So I focused my arguments on treatments that are performed, like hormone treatments. I didn't realize (and correct me if I am wrong) that you believe genital surgery is much more common than I do. Because of that my arguments probably sounded confusing to you.
Now I will answer your question:
-In regards to surgery on the genitals, I think that can safely be postponed until the patient reaches adulthood. That will give them more time to think about the procedure and develop good judgement about it. It also just seems safer to wait until the patient is done growing.
My understanding is that this view is the view held by the overwhelming majority of gender affirming care advocates. Surgery on the genitals is typically not done on minors. A doctor performing that surgery should have the same probability estimates that it will benefit the patient as they do for any other major surgery, but they should wait until the patient is an adult regardless.
- In regards to breast reduction/chest masculinization surgery for FtM transpeople, I am in favor of age-restricting that as well. Breast reductions are sometimes performed on teenagers who are still minors, usually for non-gender related reasons like back pain (the child actress, Soleil Moon Frye famously had one while she was still a minor because she was afraid of being typecast as "sexy" characters). I have heard of instances of breast reductions being done as part of gender affirming care, although that is still rare. I think a doctor should only perform such a surgery if they are at least as confident that it will help the patient as they would be if they were doing it for non-gender related reasons. Even then, I don't see that it would do much harm to restrict it to adults as well.
- Hormonal treatments such as puberty blockers and sex hormones are more commonly prescribed for minors (although even then that means teenagers, not little kids), and are a more difficult ethical issue. That is because, unlike surgery, they become less effective the older the patient gets, especially as the patient goes through natural puberty. That was what I was talking about when I said that normal puberty is also irreversible. To get the full effect, the treatment has to be done while the patient is still a minor (even then, however, there are some treatments that just delay puberty rather than change or stop it, so the patient can grow older and more mature and have a chance to reconsider)
Even in that case, though, a doctor prescribing them should be as sure that the benefits outweigh the harms as they are for any similar treatment done for non-gender-related reasons (for example, growth hormone injections to make a short child grow taller).
I hope that answers your question. Let me know if it does not.
TBH the Hippocratic oath has been a dead letter for decades IMHO, it's only brought up when they don't want to do something for personal reasons so it's trotted out to give a veneer of legitimacy. Bury it already.
It's not just socialists; basically everyone decides first what team they're on and then they back-fill everything else, including their reasoning for an argument on any given topic, to suit the answer. Libertarians and socialists, anarchists and conservatives, all do this. Even many people who describe themselves as "independent" still do this.
One consequence, which I have just been observing online, is that if you disagree with an argument by one side you are assumed to be a supporter of the other side.
I have observed this as well, and I have observed it having the effect of sometimes persuading people they are indeed on that other side.
All this business of having views and models and opinions and reasoned arguments is mostly a drama built on top of the more fundamental act of choosing and signalling what side we're on.
This explains for example why American political parties may have relatively stable groups of supporters as well as relatively stable "brands", while the positions they endorse on various issues change like a flag in the wind--and these changes tend to be stuffed down the memory hole, to preserve the sense of group identity over all else. "Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia"
Just a slight defense of Wolff and nothing novel I'm sure but for non-Utilitarian folk, though Wolff sounds like he might have been one, especially those that are religious, there is a fundamental belief, at least on some issues, there actually are good/evil stances and it might be contrary to good/bad policy that objectively benefits the most people. i.e. if denying Muhammad was the Prophet cured cancer tomorrow, I wouldn't expect Muslims to cease to exist nor incorporate that denial into.their religion. Sometimes the right answer is picking the appropriate side, not the best argument at least from a humanist perspective.
(Yes I'm foreclosing the argument that in the case of Islam, listening to Allah is a better argument than curing cancer because that way leads to subjective madness whereas David is arguing there is always (often enough) an objectively good argument even if it's just waiting to be found.)
I agree with the rest of your critique of Wolff there but on that point, just wanted to comment.
My impression is that modern left and socialists no longer consider improving the general well-being of humans a goal. More important are sharp reductions in economic activity and wealth. Lower populations, fewer people in general, less production, smaller homes, no or few cars and airplanes, far less agriculture.
I love almost everything about this piece excepted the quoted line above.
I even think I kinda understand the partial truth you meant when you wrote it.
I fully accept that most people with bad ideas are simply wrong, not evil.
But a) that is *most* people, not necessarily all people, and b) there are some ideas that are indeed not simply wrong, but evil.
I’d be surprised if you truly, fully believe the line.
You almost say as much later in the piece. “Communist dictatorship is the one true way” isn’t merely a bad idea, is it?
“For the greater good, abortion should be legal in all circumstances on a 38 week fetus not yet born if that is what the mother and the doctor think best” is merely ‘wrong’?
If you indeed DO stand wholeheartedly behind that above quoted phrase, could you please explain more why you absolutely believe it?
To be fair Hamas is justified in ALL their actions, they are in a rebellion and last I checked, they didn't enter into any UN treaties. "Criminals" have no moral obligation to follow the laws of their wardens. The goal is to be successful, not lose with honor to a code they never signed up for.
I'm not sure what Kling axis that is but it's legitimate. But I wouldn't call it oppressed/oppressor here because that would be more like Russia/Ukraine where people are giving Ukraine a pass on their war crimes even though Ukraine DID sign those treaties because they are "oppressed".
Dude, the point above is not about Hamas themselves.
It’s about the fanatical, essentially religious, beliefs of (mostly young, relatively rich, college-miseducated) Western leftists with their oppressor-oppressed ideology. Taught in our universities, and somewhere between tacitly and openly endorsed by all of the leftist establishment leadership now, most certainly university leadership.
My comment was explaining to Ratman why it is that so many young people in our country hold beliefs and advocate positions and approve of actions that most of the rest of us find both insane and deeply immoral.
Fair, I read it more as you were condemning Hamas as opposed to the Western students who support them. I.e. Hamas is justifying their own actions because they identify themselves along that axis, not the justification of the outside observer.
Do you remember being a kid or being a young adult? When I was a kid I remember that adults were constantly trying nonstop to condition us to not do drugs, not curse, not have premarital sex, not shoplift, not drink, not smoke, etc. In spite of this, pretty much all kids did some of those things. Adults tried to persuade kids to do their homework, study, and do well in school. In spite of this, most of us didn't do as well as they'd have liked us to.
When people say that adults are brainwashing kids to be trans, my first thought is to remember how effective their attempts to brainwashing kids into studying for tests were. Not only were they ineffective, they often backfired. Attempts by adults to get kids to do things often made those things uncool and made kids want to do them less. I don't see any reason why gender identity would buck this trend.
I remember being a kid and a young adult, do not remember most of what you describe. That's partly a change over time — I was born in 1945 — mostly different bubbles, in my case my family. The limit on my access to premarital sex was my inability to get it, due to some combination of very limited social skills and the lack of willing partners, not any restrictions imposed by adults. None of the other things were issues.
On the other hand, two girls at my elite private school did get pregnant, one by her boyfriend (presumably) who married her, one by a teacher who didn't. So if the adults were trying to convince kids not to have sex they were not entirely successful.
So far as your general point, I suspect that the major influence on kids, in the context of trans as of other things, is other kids. I expect that adults come in mainly by their influence on kid culture, not by persuading individual kids to change sex.
Why are there laws making it illegal for teachers to tell parents about their students' personal pronouns and gender identify, and nothing else? Why is it child endangerment for parents to not use their children's preferred pronouns or not approve transgender surgery? IIRC, it is not illegal for, say, Christian Scientist parents to refuse transfusions and surgery and vaccines for their children. Yet pronoun misuse is criminal child endangerment! Something is out of whack.
When woke teachers push children into secret changes which are illegal for parents to ask about, I call it brainwashing.
Most kids do in fact study for tests, and pass tests. Do you still think gender identify doesn't buck this trend?
Kids rebel against their adults' musical tastes, fashions, and other inconsequential matters, not taking tests. Do you think gender identify is inconsequential?
> When people say that adults are brainwashing kids to be trans, my first thought is to remember how effective their attempts to brainwashing kids into studying for tests were.
In a certain percentage of cases they are. In fact their appears to be a correlation between the kids who are successfully brainwashed into studying for tests and the ones successfully brainwashed into having themselves castrated.
I think the best part of this piece is the discussion of the core issue “who has the right answer?” Friedman is correct that most on one side would not endorse the consequences of their ideology as predicted by the other side.
That insight is, I think, the first step to a revival of good faith discourse between those who disagree.
For my part, I think libertarianism and communism are both governing ideologies doomed to failure.
Libertarianism seems inevitably fated to evolve into a feudal and/or oligarchic sewer; market inefficiencies will create compounding concentrations of wealth, creating a new generation of liege lords who will swiftly betray their free market principles in the name of their own interests.
Communism is damned by the limits of computability. Central planning cannot succeed and so the whole enterprise falls apart.
I think “the right answer” is more boring and less dramatic than these ideologies: markets are good at some things and bad at others, so we should let markets function with oversight to handle bad actors, and some taxation/redistribution for commons and social safety nets.
This lands us basically back at some form of state with a representative government and a market economy, but that’s still a large policy space within which there’s a host of level setting problems and enforcement questions. e.g. What’s the best way to fund infrastructure? How should society deal with crime and punishment? Direct Democracy? Republic? What branches of government should exist and how should they interface?
In the spirit of this post, if you think I’m wrong about the consequences of your ideology, or mine has some deleterious issues: convince me
I think you are wrong about both communism and libertarianism. The limits of computability are a problem but Abba Lerner offered at least a crude solution — have your commissars pretend to be capitalists, run a pretend capitalist economy to take advantage of the market's decentralized coordination. The more fundamental problems are incentives and information.
I see no reason to expect a market economy to create a compounding concentration of wealth and mortality has the opposite effect: shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.
What is wrong with your view of the consequences of your system is that we have no way of making it in the interest of actors on the political market to act in the general interest, for familiar public choice reasons. We do have a way of solving that problem in the private mar ket, although imperfectly. With philosopher king rulers some things might be done better by government but we don't have philosopher kings and if there were qualified candidates they would not end up in power.
I think though that still goes to the "computability problem" TBH, i.e. to use a horrible transhumanism term, in the future post-singularity culture, our philosopher king / commissar is our new benovalent omnipotent AI overlord. I think that's partly the draw both Communism and Libertarianism in that both can easily legitimately claim no true Scotsman while conceptually seeing a future where said Scotsman could finally exist.
I've always explained them to laymen like my kids "They are futuristic aspirational political idealogies, they haven't been proven to fail yet unlike representative democracy hence don't dismiss them outright. They may still get their day, even if it's a million years from now".
The biggest flaw I see is you think free markets create oligarchs. It is governments which create them. Someone asked me why I blame government instead of cronies for all the corruption. I told him because without government, corruption would be limited to individual companies, and the corruption would lead to waste and inefficiency and poor market performance, with no government to protect them or bail them out.
The last thing bureaucrats and politicians want is to solve the problems which created their jobs. Where businesses go bankrupt for not solving problems, governments just expand.
I mean, yeah, that’s the *idealized* behavior of free markets, but there’s a long and well documented history of monopolies, duopolies, and cartels (economic, not criminal) demonstrate the limits of laissez faire theory here. I should note that while some monopolies are government induced, e.g. various utility firms, government is not required for such market structures to form.
Monopolies and similar structures break the competition required for markets to freeze out corrupt actors.
Natural monopolies are not inconsistent with laissez-faire theory — they are one of the possible solutions to markets where a competitive outcome is not possible. I am not sure what sort of "corrupt actors" you are referring to.
To clarify: I was trying to say that even in a completely unregulated, zero-government environment, monopolies and market failures would still occur, contra the other comment.
I think the confusion stems from my more colloquial use of “laissez faire theory.” As I say in the prior paragraph: I agree with the theoretical results that laissez faire markets can yield market failures. I meant more that the proponents of deregulation often ignore these failures, or shift the blame in a very “nobody’s tried real communism way.”
By corrupt actors I mean in a very general sense “market participants not playing fair.”
The argument I have been making for a long time, among other places here, is that market failures are a problem in a laissez-faire system, but the conditions that cause them are the exception on the private market, the rule on the political market, so shifting decisions from the former to the latter is more likely to increase than decrease the problem.
There is no long and well documented history of monopolies created by free markets, other than first movers who inevitably lose their advantage to competitors. The classic scary monopoly is Standard Oil, and that's just propaganda, misinformation. Rockefeller had his monopoly because he drove down prices and produced better products. He hit a peak of 91%, I think, and was already down to 70% or something when the trust busters came after him.
Google is the current bogey man, especially in Europe, but their share is declining and AI competition is taking more market share.
All monopolies are created by governments, either through IP, laws, or favoritism, and always unjustified. Cable TV is a favorite example of natural monopolies, and it is just another lie. Why else would cities sign a monopoly contract with one provider, then be sued by competitors who are willing to string their own wiring and think they can still make a profit?
Public utilities are another. When John Snow traced a cholera outbreak to a single fresh water source in 1854, that area of London had three separate private fresh water suppliers with their own underground pipes. If 1854 London could do that, it could be done today.
Garbage collection is another. My area mandates that every household has to have a contract with their crony trash collector. Last I checked, it was $10/can/week, and my house generates one can of trash every two months. I collect the trash and drive it to the dump 45 minutes away for $18 when I have other errands near there. The county claims their mandate provides efficient service. It does not.
Addendum: most problems solved by bureaucracy/governance are not one-offs “we just need to get everybody a doctor’s appointment scheduled for this week and then we’re done,” but rather structural questions “how do we maintain access to quality healthcare for our communities over some indefinite time horizon.”
You can disagree with particular solutions chosen, or the amount of paperwork/spurious information processing required for operations, (I often do!) but saying that they don’t want to solve problems seems reductive to me. A bit like claiming that seatbelts don’t want to solve windshield ejections because you have to keep using them.
To be clear, I think markets should broadly operate with a wide degree of latitude, just not without limit. Absolute free markets lack various error correcting properties that I want, which government can (though it doesn’t always manage it) to provide
Name any error correcting properties that you want but which you think free markets don't provide. It will be something you can't convince people to supply voluntarily.
Well, if your definition includes the *total* absence of government (the point is *quite* unclear), then property rights, the rule of law in general and remedy for fraud in particular are some of them.
[I make no bones that I am roughly a classical liberal “minarchist”, and surely agree with most of your arguments, up to the point you suggest literally no government at all.]
I agree with most of your comment, but I’m pretty sure you are confusing “generic” libertarianism with anarcho-capitalist libertarianism.
You may well even be relatively accurately reflecting DF’s views; I will not speak for him.
But you are *not* accurately using the term “libertarianism” - and at minimum are not accurately describing the views of most of those who self-identify as libertarian - with your claims that it is the relatively extreme anarcho-capitalist strand of what is broadly known as libertarianism.
Very interesting points. I have however also met some libertarian-leaning people who, when I tried to show that Scandinavian healt care systems seems to have better outcomes (like lower infant mortality) for a lower price than the US system came pretty close to saying that they would support even a worse system for everyone if it was necessary to do so in order to uphold the holy principle of private property. Or that there must be some statistical error, since it must be theoretically impossible for any social democratic system to perform better than a free market.
But on average I think this way of thinking is much rarer among libertarians than among socialists.
Since when has the US had a free market health care system? Surely not since 1945.
The single-payer nationalized health care system dreamed of by progressives would probably be less bad for patients than the status quo. And that's saying something.
(To be fair, it would probably produce less new drugs and techniques than the status quo. But the FDA works as hard as it can to prevent such things from reaching patients.)
I admit I don't understand the US health care system at all. at least I get as much as that it is not a true free market system, and such a system might work better.
But, on the other hand, if one is prepared to give the US system the laurels for a higher median income (which I am prepared to give, with the addendum that part of it is explained by larger households and longer working hours) then one must also be prepared to admit that the same effect does not kick in with health care.
Also, I completely agree that a European system with lower medicine costs would lead to less funding for research, but I guess that wasn't the actual philosophy when the system was first designed.
You should distinguish between "the US system" compared to European alternatives and "a free market system" compared to alternatives. Most European countries spend a larger fraction of their income on the welfare state than the US but I don't think they are consistently less free market in other ways. The UK has a less free market medical system than the US, Switzerland I think more.
Going by memory, before Obamacare came in about half of medical expenditure in the US was by government and the other half heavily regulated.
I always thought the Swiss system was interesting. Insurance is mandatory, but consumers can choose their own plans and insurance providers. The state sponsors insurance for people who genuinely can't afford it.
It seems to have some of the best of two worlds, like what might also be achieved by exchanging normal welfare with UBI.
However, I just heard second hand from a Swiss doctor that had lived in Denmark that the one way their system is inferior to the Scandinavian model is that the patient information between different hospitals are not integrated, like it is when the entire system is run by the state.
My quick description of the US system is that it is a bastardized combination of a sort of free market and a government managed system, which has none of the advantages of either and combines the worst disadvantages of both.
Thank your lucky stars that you don't have personal experience with it. It's ... Kafkaesque. And nothing at all like a free market.
Mostly (IMHO) this is because of a US tax policy that health insurance costs paid by employers aren't taxed as income, whereas if the same funds are paid to employees who in turn purchase their own care or insurance, those funds are taxed as income. This creates a huge incentive for employers to partly pay employees in the form of (untaxed) health insurance. And to make that "insurance" not really insurance at all, but just pre-paid health care costs (to maximize the tax dodge). Every doctor visit for sniffles is covered.
Everything else that's broken cascades from that. People lose health insurance when they leave their jobs. There is almost no market for individually-purchased health insurance. And since nearly all care is paid for via these employer-sponsored "insurance" plans (or government equivalents for the poor), and not by patients directly, patients demand "gold-plated" services - they have no incentive to weigh costs vs benefits. Nor do physicians or hospitals - since patients don't complain about high costs, they do their best to provide what patients want (everything regardless of cost). Of course they like it because they can charge and earn more.
The giant insurance firms in the middle, funneling cash from employers to providers, resist these charges by demanding ever more paperwork and justification - to the point where more is spent by providers on administration than on providing care. And the paperwork and administrative rules frustrate sick patients to no end.
Yes, that would fix it. But it would cut insurance companies out of a huge and profitable business, so they fight it. Also medical equipment and supplies mfrs - a price-sensitive market would be much less profitable.
> Everything else that's broken cascades from that.
I'm not sure I agree with that as you state it, although I certainly agree that a lot that's broken cascades from that.
But even if we fix the problem you describe, we still have the problem that what we are taught to think of as "health insurance" is actually mostly not insurance at all. Insurance is supposed to be a way to pool risk among a large population against rare, unforeseen events. But most of what we think of as "health insurance" is not covering that: it's covering either routine, predictable expenses like physical exams and screening tests; non-predictable but routine expenses like going the doctor when you have flu symptoms; and treatment of long-term chronic conditions, which might be "unforeseen" in the sense that nobody can predict whether or when they will get cancer or heart disease, but are not rare since a significant fraction of the population has them. The only parts of our "health insurance" system that are actually insurance in the usual sense are things like coverage against accidents.
These very different things should be handled by very different methods--but in our system, they can't be, because we insist on lumping them all together under "health insurance" and we don't even think about how little sense that makes.
I used to have a very simple catastrophic insurance policy. I think I paid everything up to $2400/year, we shared payment up to $3200/year, and they covered everything over (I probably had some small fraction of it, I do not remember). Then Obamacare made it impossible. It really annoys me how insurance has come to mean everything but.
I asked several doctors, pre-Obamacare, how much cheaper they'd be if I paid myself instead of by insurance, and the answers ranged from 1/3 to 2/3 the insurance price. They couldn't be any more precise because they weren't set up that way, but they were in general agreement with "a lot cheaper".
Yes. There are a few physicians here and there who've setup practices that don't accept insurance at all - patients either pay for services or pay an annual fee to cover all services, and the providers don't have to do paperwork. They generally charge much less than insurance costs.
Unfortunately even for them, they have to pay inflated prices for supplies and equipment, because vendors are all selling to conventional buyers who care only about quality and not at all about cost.
The system is much worse than I made it sound above - I just scratched the surface.
Just one example - hospitals have price lists (thousands of pages of indecipherable coded services mandated by government...) that are secret and not shown to patients. But insurance companies negotiate "discounts" from those prices - often of over 90%. So if you don't buy insurance from one of the big insurers you pay the "list prices" that nobody else pays...
There has been a fair bit of economic research on this topic. One key point about the difference in the Scandinavian system and the US was that government home visits for prospective and new mothers are common in the Scandinavian countries, visits that can end in children being taken away from unsuitable mothers. We don't do that here in the US, and most of the infant mortality happens with the kinds of mothers that would absolutely have their kids taken away.
There were also rather large differences in how infant mortality is measured, which at the time I was looking (some 10-12 years ago) reduced the difference a great deal.
I read something detailed several months ago comparing infant mortality, and it took into account everything I had heard of which skewed the results: whether preemies who died were counted as live-born, how long they survived after birth, and so on. The US was not top of the list as I had expected from the previous complaints about the US trying to save earlier preemies than elsewhere. Don't remember where it was, not sure I would even recognize it again if I did find it.
That was a big writeup on OurWorldInData where they tried to correct for different definitions of child mortality. As I remember it the difference between the US and Scandinavia fell slightly when the same definiton was used, from 2.5X to just 2x higher. I also read it, but somehow can't find the link right now, it seems they have taken the article down for some reason.
It might be the number of children removed by child protective services play a larger role, like doctor Hammer suggests. I can't find good statistics comparing rate of child removal, and I have heard both that the US have a higher rate and a lower rate than North Europe. Obviously if the lower child mortality is only caused by removing more children from their parents it would be a lot less of an argument for the health care system.
I thought a quote from Joseph Schumpeter might be germane:
". . . . it is absurd for other nations to try to copy Swedish examples; the only effective way of doing so would be to import the Swedes and put them in charge.”
Well... the US did import a lot of Swedes, they are still around, mainly in Minnesota. You could just put them in charge.
Or heck, the US could do what it does with all the best engineers and start up founders from around the world: Lure them to migrate with slightly higher pay and slightly lower taxes. I mean, I see no reason why the US government would not be able to find 50 experienced Swedish and Danish doctors and pay them to come over and copy their own health care system.
Do you think US patients are worse than Scandinavians? I know that for example obesity rates are higher in the US, which might explain some of the difference in life expectancy. It is because of this I think that it is a better idea to compare infant mortality or maternal mortality to find the actual effect of the health care.
Yep, I used to live in Copenhagen, biked every day. Now, living in the country side with a longer commute I have to drive. I absolutely liked being able to bike so much more. I have sen Bryan Caplan refering to engineers in Copenhagen having to bike as evidence that Denmark is actually poor. I think it is much more annoying having to waste time in traffic and then try to find some time to get exercise in the evening instead.
An individualist society can simulate socialism with contracts, but a socialist society cannot even tolerate individualists, let alone simulate individualism. Yes, of course the contract simulation doesn't include any coercion beyond upholding contracts, but that's still more than socialism allows for individualists. The fact that socialism requires coercion ought to be telling, but most people write it off as all governments are coercive.
Another problem with taking over an anarchy is the utter lack of government structure. No centrally-controlled taxation, police powers, judicial system, regulatory agencies, or any bureaucracies to co-opt. All would have to be built up from scratch, especially including the private counterparts, making monetary gains elusive.
Businesses would have existing accounting systems and internal procedures and bureaucrats, but the Mafia was famous for keeping two sets of books, and I imagine anarchists under occupation would find it even easier. Effective enforcement would require occupation observers in every store and office to verify all transactions. Even spot checks would be useless, since would-be customers could avoid stores with occupation observers. Even if they didn't notice the observer before they came in, it would be trivially easy to ask for something known to be out of stock and leave without buying anything.
That first sentence is so important. It makes me nuts when people claim individualists or libertarians are against family ties or communities, as though such groups only work if people are coerced into joining them or remaining with them. The government doesn't enforce Amish family, church and community ties, yet they work quite well. (In fact, the Amish go to great lengths to keep the "English" government out of their business.)
Part of the problem is conflating "anarchy" and "chaos". They are not the same. (I have my doubts about how long anarchy could avoid developing gangs which turn into governments, simply because people want justice now, not maybe karma maybe later. It's one of the reasons I spent so much time on mu Chartertopia project.)
I have had conversations with people who believe that all roads ever built were by government. They do not believe that air traffic control was invented by private airlines or that radio frequency allocation was handled privately at first, then just as common law began recognizing a property interest in frequencies, cronies convinced legislators to create the FCC precursor so cronies could control frequencies by central planning. They are so indoctrinated by government the almighty that they cannot imagine society without government.
I don't see why private rights enforcement agencies would be less likely than governments to deliver justice now.
The bigger problem is how do private rights enforcement agencies defend against being conquered by states?
Another way to put this problem is that the efficient size for a private rights enforcement agency tends to be much larger than the efficient size for a production firm. And unless the area has extremely favorable geography, generally much larger.
Also private rights enforcement agencies have a free-rider problem, which causes them to evolve into protection rackets and ultimately governments.
You can find discussions of those issues in _The Machinery of Freedom_, available from my web page as a free pdf.
I think they would deliver better justice only if they were not private law. I believe any system of truly private law, where individuals can have their own sets of morality laws, can only result in so much bloody mayhem that they would toss the private law aspect.
Maybe I should describe my understanding of what this concept is.
Everyone has a protection agency, an insurance company, a security subscription, whatever the details are. If Alice finds her home burgled, someone investigates -- Alice, the security agency, some independent investigation agency. They identify Bob.
Absent malfeasance on Alice's part, her agency reimburses her regardless.
Alice's agency contacts Bob, he says talk to his agency.
The agencies talk, negotiate some decision. If Bob's agency agrees Bob did it, they reimburse Alice's agency and bill Bob.
If Bob doesn't reimburse his agency, they drop him like a hot potato. No other agency will touch a deadbeat like Bob, so he now has no protection. Alice could beat him up, kill him, and no agency will take his side. So obviously Bob will pay up.
If the agencies can't agree, the alternative is literal war, and since that is expensive in time, blood, and treasure, they will compromise.
There can also be courts, but that is a side issue.
One of the less obvious keys to all this is that because these replace government, someone else has to write laws, and that is these agencies. They all write their own laws. People look them over like any other insurance company and decide which ones best match their idea of justice, along with price, convenience, reputation, etc.
Sometimes laws are written by courts, sometimes both, and when agencies disagree, they have to find a jointly acceptable court. But as I said, that's just a side issue.
This difference in laws is one place where the idea goes off the rails. "Private law" implies people can have whatever laws they want. Carol's agency hates drinkers, Doug's agency mandates a morning whiskey. If Carol sees Doug drinking in public, she wants her agency to sue Doug. Doug countersues for breaking his agency's law. No compromise is possible.
Remember that thing about war if they can't compromise? Might makes right. Smaller agencies won't survive.
Another flaw is this idea that Bob burglar will pay his agency's bill and go on with his life. But his agency now knows he's a burglar. They're going to jack up his premiums sky high, and he won't be able to pay them. He'll be agency-less and have no protection from anybody, Alice included. He'll be an outlaw.
The same applies to teetotaler Carol and drunk Doug. Their agencies will bill each other, pay up because war is too expensive, and drop Carol and Doug for not paying their bills, because everyone knows they will continue to be offended at each other's immorality.
Same with a zillion topics, from abortion to smoking to dress codes to music to every taboo and contraband and uptight prude the world has every imagined.
Some of the proposals I've seen envision constitution-mandated slave farms and factories, where outlaws work off their debts and be released with a clean sheet. Ha! We all know well rehabilitation works in real life. Bob will go right back to burgling, Carol and Doug will go right back to being offended.
These proponents also assure us these slaves will be treated kindly so as to pay off their debt as quickly as possible. Uh huh, we know how kindly slaves have been treated throughout history.
Another topic seldom discussed is all these outlaws. When outlaw Ellen violates her contract with Fred, his agency pays him, but Ellen has no agency. Does Fred's agency refuse to pay him because he didn't have uninsured criminal coverage and should have verified Ellen's insurance status before contracting with her?
Seems to me there would be a lot of deadbeat outlaws. This scheme has turned into uninsured criminal insurance more than security insurance.
In other words, "private law" is tantamount to false advertising. The agencies will coalesce into a few with very similar laws, where the only negotiations will be between 3rd degree larceny and 2nd degree burglary.
They will have reinvented government.
I published a fairly detailed description of a private law system and analysis of how it would work more than fifty years ago, expanded some in later editions. It differs in various ways from what you have imagined. If you wish to criticize it you can find the book as a free pdf on my web page.
I've been rereading it and taking notes, and it surprised me a little to find I have most of the same objections I wrote down sometime 5-10 years ago. But my notes are too disorganized to write up yet, and too long to post here. I'll work them over in the next few days and send you a DM or email or something.
I should go read it even if I don't wish to criticize it. As nonsensical as private law seems to me, I am sure your description will be better than most. My notes are at least ten years old. Is this in Machinery? -- Yes it is, if I'd read just two more comments.
> Does Fred's agency refuse to pay him because he didn't have uninsured criminal coverage and should have verified Ellen's insurance status before contracting with her?
Yes. More precisely, that's what will happen under the assumption that Fred's agency has written their policy that way, which I would expect to be the case.
Which actually means Fred will be sure to only enter into contracts with people who have agencies insuring them that are willing to work with his agency. The few Freds that are too dumb to do that will simply be out-competed and will end up being nothing more than rounding error in the numbers.
> Seems to me there would be a lot of deadbeat outlaws.
Not if it turns out that being a deadbeat outlaw means no one will contract with you, so you end up being poor while everyone else is getting rich by reaping the benefits of cooperation, specialization, and trade.
In other words, you're implicitly assuming that, absent government coercion, people have no incentive to actually be trustworthy cooperators. But that's not the case. In the kind of libertarian society envisioned in, for example, The Machinery Of Freedom, being a trustworthy cooperator would be an obvious benefit--or, to turn that around, *not* being a trustworthy cooperator would be an obvious hindrance. Yes, there would still be rare people who are able to make a living without having to be trustworthy cooperators--by running various con games, for example, picking their marks carefully--but they'll be rare.
By contrast, in our current societies that have governments, being a trustworthy cooperator can be beneficial up to a point, but your gains from that are always at the mercy of the government's ability to coerce. As the saying goes, no man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. And in our current societies that have governments, there are many *more* ways that people can benefit from *not* being trustworthy cooperators, by figuring out how to use the government's coercive powers for their own personal advantage.
What if Ellen’s insurance status changed after the contract was signed?
All these schemes assume people behave rationally. They don’t. That’s why we have criminals and contract disputes. They also assume all these agencies care about their customers. They don’t. One of the schemes I saw, I think on Mises,org, even wanted his minarchy constitution to explicitly call out slave farms and factories where the deadbeat outlaws would work off their debt. They would be treated kindly to get maximum work out of them, rehabilitated and reformed by the experience, and they would be released when their debt was paid off with a clean bill of health.
David’s description is far more rational than that nonsense! The guy couldn’t even see the most obvious major hole, that any agency which couldn’t find the real criminal could just point the finger at any of the numerous outlaws, turn him into a debt slave, and he could do nothing about it. They’d sure get their restitution, but it wouldn’t be from the real criminal.
My main gripe with all these protection racket schemes is their lack of faith in individuals. They push all this justice onto a few big box agencies arbitrating as third parties who don’t actually give a hoot about their clients. You claim that Fred or Ellen or whoever (substack’s interface sucks and I can’t go look it up right now) could handle her case herself. No, she couldn’t, not in any practical sense, because if she doesn’t do what the big box agency wants, the alternatiive is war, and she will lose or be dead, without recourse. Remember, war is always the ultimate alternative, and might definitely makes right. Public reputation be damned; the big box agencies will all be so similar that the last thing they will do is take an individual’s side against a fellow big box agency.
I have dealt with insurance companies, and they do not care. One accident involved three cars (I was number three) playing bumper bounce at about 10 mph with no real damage, and the first two claimed $2000 whiplash damage for them and their husbands. When I told the adjuster that both were solo drivers and they were lying, her attitude was too bad, so sad, it’s too small to pursue.
Protection rackets won’t care either, since all their laws are going to coalesce into the same overall set. There are three major cell phone carriers in the US. They have their differences, but if all customers were randomly reassigned daily to different carriers, very few would notice any difference in call quality.
Same with major ISPs. My small rural ISPs have all been bought out by big ISPs, and they don’t care either. This idea of thousands of small boutique protection agencies is pure fantasy.
> Carol's agency hates drinkers, Doug's agency mandates a morning whiskey. If Carol sees Doug drinking in public, she wants her agency to sue Doug. Doug countersues for breaking his agency's law. No compromise is possible.
You're assuming that everyone will be able to find some agency that will be willing to defend their personal preferences, no matter how idiosyncratic. That's not a realistic assumption.
What I would expect to happen in the cases described above is that Carol and Doug won't be able to find any agencies at all that are willing to enforce their idiosyncratic preferences, so if Carol wants to stop Doug from drinking, and Doug wants to force Carol to drink, they're going to have to do it using only their own resources, with no agency to back them up. Which of course means both of them will just grumble in private about how the other is a strange person, and nothing more will actually happen.
Yes, exactly. But that’s part of my gripe with calling this scheme “private law”. I realize it means not public law created by governments, but most people take it to mean personal law, custom law, bespoke law, writing your own laws, as if buying a custom tailored suit or sewing your own clothes. The reality is getting corporate law, like choosing between Target and Walmart, and all the impedance matching means they will all devolve into such similar sets of laws that the only thing the agencies will negotiate over is 3rd degree larceny vs 2nd degree burglary.
It’s corporate big box law, not private law, and indistinguishable from government once all is said and done.
> Part of the problem is conflating "anarchy" and "chaos".
That might well be because, historically speaking, the people who call themselves "anarchist" and actually make the news are the ones who are promoting chaos: to them, "anarchy" means "tear down the existing governments" without giving any thought to what would replace them or whether it might be a good idea to take that process slowly because so many people have organized their lives in good faith around our existing government systems. I prefer to not even use the term "anarchy" because of those connotations; but unfortunately we don't have a good neutral term for what "anarchy" actually means to those of us who are using the concept embodied in, for example, The Machinery of Freedom.
I realized "anarchy" was a confused word the first time I read of an Anarchists Union fighting on the Marxist side of the Spanish Civil War. Then I found out their heretical word was "property", and they didn't just means the means of production, or even housing, cars, and so on; the real nutters claimed no property at all, down to shared underwear and toothbrushes.
"Capitalism" is also a confused word.
One of the suggested replacements for "anarcho-capitalism" is "market anarchy" which doesn't really help. "Laissez-faire" has been rendered useless too. But I don't think it would matter if a better term came along. People are scared to death of life without government telling them what is allowed and what is mandated.
I'm a long-term optimist and short-term pessimist. I don't believe anything can stop the US's slide into socialism run by despots. But I do believe the result will blow up and revive the 1775 urge to get rid of oppressive governments, and maybe the second draft of a US constitution will provide better ways of controlling government.
I wrote the following elsewhere.
The problem lies not in creating a government which can be reined in; current governments could be reined in if people had the time to take the trouble. But honest people have far too many of their own concerns to control the parasites whose very survival depends on stealing other people's taxes, and whose job satisfaction stems from pushing people around.
There has to be a complete reversal of roles, where the parasites are the ones begging from working people, instead of working people wondering what the parasites are up to behind closed government doors. Make free rides so difficult that begging is preferable, if not honest work. Government must not be able to define its own limits or steal its own funding. We, the people, must have that control, and it must be individualized, just as in any marketplace.
Agreed on all points, save I don't think anarchy will necessarily generate gangs that turn into governments, so much as private firms will grow to the point that they are basically small governments. In much the same way as one can conceivably have more "god and everything" stores than just Wal Mart and Target (and Fleet Farm if you cut out the grocery section) but in practice almost everywhere has one of those two stores, I think most places will have but one or two de facto governments running the place. Which probably isn't bad, as the corporations that are doing so will probably be doing so precisely because they are really good at it compared to everyone else. To the Martian viewer the result would probably look a lot like having thousands of tiny kingdoms and such, but the underlying dynamics will function much better.
I tend to think that government of some sort is just too entrenched in human behavior, but there are vast gains from better (and smaller) governments over worse ones.
I hope your "private firms" aren't what some call "protection rackets" and others call security agencies, protection agencies, private law, and so on: merged insurance agencies and police departments. Those strike me as some of the most bizarre libertarian / anarchist theories I can imagine.
* Everyone who has dealt with insurance agencies knows they don't give a fig about their customers, only about resolving disputes to their own benefit. Everyone who reads the news knows that good cops don't turn in bad cops, and they don't give a fig about justice. Combining the two has got to be someone's troll.
* The rationale for private law is not negotiable differences in 3rd degree larceny vs 2nd degree burglary, but to enforce contraband and taboo and morality choices, where there can be no negotiated compromise. Imagine MADD and DAMM clients disputing someone drinking in public, or "contraceptives-are-a-mortal-sin" vs "abortion-til-after-birth" disputing pre-marital sex.
* No one can tell someone's agency or private laws without asking for IDs. Radio and TV stations, magazines, stores, bars, restaurants, every business open to the public will do something to offend somebody and violate their agency's laws.
* The ultimate threat of literal war between agencies means might makes right. Small custom agencies will never survive, and the remaining agencies will all have minor variations on the same set of "standard" laws. At least MADD vs DAMM and "no-contraceptives" vs "abortion-forever" wars will be impossible, but it makes a joke of the claim of allowing private laws.
* The idea that protection agencies will remain virtual instead of territorial makes no sense in light of so many incompatible morality laws. They will become territorial sooner or later just to reduce conflicts.
All protection rackets do is recreate government, and poorly.
My ultimate conclusion is that too many smart libertarians and anarchists think they are viable, so either we have differing opinions of what "individualism" means, or my reading comprehension is piss poor.
"I hope your "private firms" aren't what David calls "protection rackets" "
Where have I ever referred to rights enforcement agencies as "protection rackets"?
I couldn't find any passage in your books even vaguely similar to the general discussion of private law which I remember with the (para)phrase "more honestly known as protection rackets", so I edited that comment. I'm going to have to remember harder.
I only have three of your eBooks, and only found "protection racket" in The Machinery of Freedom, chapter 30 "The Stability Problem", first paragraph, and not even close to what I remember, not even the right context.
I'll keep looking. Might have to buy some more eBooks. My physical books are elsewhere right now.
I could have sworn I saw that in one of your books. I’ll look for it.
I am agnostic on the form they are most likely to take, and indeed suspect that many different forms will develop in different places based on culture and local convenience. Some places might see more of a common law with paid private arbitrators/judges (sort of like Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" idea). Some places might see something more like the local Icelandic lords Dr Friedman described in "Law's Order". Others might follow an owned resort style, where someone has a lot of land and leases it to others with conditions on behavior. Maybe some will be religious communities. Probably some will be gangs, stationary bandit type domains.
I just don't think that pure anarchy is long term stable, and humans will tend to create basically very small, localized governments. (Localized might not be quite the word, but I suspect that people will tend to sort by general proximity as it is easier to know what to expect etc.)
Note though too that I didn't say things would be great, just I suspect better than they are now, possibly closer to optimality in what humans can actually achieve than we are now by a wide margin. Maybe not though.
"I just don't think that pure anarchy is long term stable"
What does "pure anarchy" mean here? There are, as your comment suggests, lot of alternatives other than governments.
But the Amish are happy to let non-Amish taxpayers pay to maintain their roads and provide innumerable other services. They permanently banish the children who won't drink the Kool Aid. And don't get me started on the puppy mills.
The decision whether to agree to an Amish community's Meidung is made as an adult — the restrictions don't apply before that, although of course Amish parents, like other parents, have some control over their children. Teenagers commonly do things that would not be permitted to them as adults, assuming they decided to be part of the community.
By "puppy mill" do you mean "large family"?
No, I assume that everyone is aware of this. Puppy mills are, essentially, industrial breeding facilities for dogs, which are kept in inhumane conditions. The females are mostly kept in cages and sometimes never set foot on the ground. There is no attention paid to genetic diversity so many of the puppies are inbred and afflicted with genetic conditions. Puppy mills are ostensibly illegal but seldom get shut down. Fortunately, fewer and fewer pet stores buy from Puppy mills.
What does that have to do with the Amish? That was what we were discussing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtTV2D1jt4Q
Yes, and to equate surrogacy with puppy mills is ridiculous.
Only no. The Amish make their own roads where applicable. And they pay taxes so, possibly, you don’t know what you are talking about.
I'm not aware of any roads built by the Amish. I don't think they built or maintain the Lincoln Highway for instance. Lancaster and surrounding counties are heavily subsidized by the rest of the state, mainly SE Pennsylvania suburbs.
Ever spend time on a large farm? There are many roads thereon.
And why would they have built Rt 30?
Lancaster is in the top 20% of American cities by size. What evidence do you have that and surrounding counties are "heavily subsidized by the rest of the state, mainly SE Pennsylvania suburbs"?
The problem with such a stark declaration is that US federal and state governments meddle so much in so many ways which would work fine in the private sector that trying to untangle the indirect subsidies is impossible.
More importantly, the Amish rely on the "English" to protect them from would be thieves and murderers.
Do they? What exactly does that mean, anyway? If you mean the courts and police, the Amish don't really have much choice, nor does anyone. I don't know what the Amish attitude is towards guns and self-defense.
There was a controversial case a year or two ago in which an Amish farmer had his large gun collection seized by feds because he sold one gun and they said he was a dealer and needed an FFL. His attorney wrote it up on his podcast channel, vivabarneslaw.locals.com .
> Do they? What exactly does that mean, anyway? If you mean the courts and police, the Amish don't really have much choice, nor does anyone.
True. If you asked the Amish, their "official" answer would be to deny they need or want the protection. However, without the protection, or the protection of some stationary bandits, their lifestyle wouldn't be possible as they'd get robbed by roving bandits.
> I don't know what the Amish attitude is towards guns and self-defense.
In theory absolute pacifism.
I believe the usual Amish policy is not to report crimes against themselves to the police, which is as far as they can go towards denying the protection.
In any case, Amish pay the taxes that fund the police just as other people do. The tax they do not pay is Social Security — and they don't collect it. They pay the taxes that fund the schools, make less use of them than other people.
"The solution to that problem was provided to him [Wolff] by one of the student revolutionaries, one he thought was almost certainly a communist, who told him that he did not need a philosophical derivation of ethics. All he needed was to decide which side he was on."
What that says is that might makes right. Very modern conception, or at least, implementation. In addition, moreover, one must not be too understanding of the contemporary Left. I don't think we are dealing with the old European social democrats, who I could talk with.
Seems to me the contemporary Left is not thinking about consequences for all people, or even lots of people. They are thinking only of consequences for themselves, a fairly small slice of society, envious to be sure, and helmed by a revolutionary guard bent on fomenting chaos.
I do not see any attempt to try to understand the evolved social and economic system, nor to appreciate any facts.
I don't see how that corresponds to might makes right.
Oh, the more guys on one's side the mightier one is.
He didn't assert that there were more on his side.
The modern leftists baffled me until I read something recent that their ideology is based on oppressors vs the oppressed, and so many relatively rich kids who feel guilty about having it so good that they feel they have to atone for that accident of fate by tearing down everything which created their white privilege oppressor status.
I don't know enough of them to know how accurate that is for how many of them, and I don;t want to. But it's the most plausible explanation I've seen for bizarre stuff like Queers For Palestine, the 1619 history nonsense, and cancel culture.
> their ideology is based on oppressors vs the oppressed
And on those being the *only* possible categories. Which of course leaves out the majority (if not the vast majority) of actual human interactions. When you insist on only carrying a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
> It did not seem to occur to him that I, or anyone, might disagree about the relevant facts, that the argument might be not about what outcomes we wanted but about how to get them
Once you notice this failure mode, you see it everywhere. The world is full of people who seem to think that their opponents are in full agreement with them about the negative consequences of some policy, and that their opponents are simply in favor of negative consequences. It seems like some people literally can't imagine that other people believe different facts than them, but find it easy to imagine that other people are evil. Here are some recent examples that I have come across:
- Economic leftists tend to assume that anyone who opposes taxing the rich must have some vain hope of becoming rich themselves someday. It doesn't occur to them that someone could believe taxes past some point might harm the economy, or that the rich might genuinely deserve their wealth.
- Opponents of "gender affirming care" seem incapable of imagining that anyone would believe that some minors benefit from such care. They assume that their opponents must agree with them that such treatments are harmful to minors, but are pretending not to for some sinister reason.
- Opponents of increased immigration do not seem capable of conceiving that anyone would think immigration benefits the receiving country. They assume their opponents just like foreigners more than natives for some bizarre reason.
I oppose child genital mutilation because it is almost always the result of children being brainwashed by woke teachers. I base this not on anecdotal stories, but by the behaviors of its proponents:
Several states have made it criminal child endangerment for parents to not use a child's preferred pronouns. Denying genital mutilation surgery on top of it is beyond the pale.
Several states have made it illegal for teachers to tell parents about their children's preferred pronouns or name changes, even if the parents expressly ask.
It used to be dogma that homosexuality was genetic and immutable. This was the basis for outlawing gay conversion therapy, even voluntary. Now dogma is that there are 57 genders which can be changed on a whim.
It used to be dogma that African tribal female genital mutilation was the sin of all sins, and chemical castration was so evil that even convicted pedophile rapists could not undergo it. Now it is dogma that teachers can discover what their student's true gender is and recommend them for the same surgery and chemical castration, all without their parents' permission.
Children are distinct from adults in not having the maturity to sign contracts, to join the military, to smoke tobacco or drink alcohol or do drugs, dance topless or nude, buy guns, and many many other adult behaviors. Yet now we are expected to believe that 2-year-olds can make irreversible decisions about genital mutilation surgery and chemical castration, against their parents' wishes.
It used to be dogma that men and women were physically distinct, and thus was born Title IX mandating separate men's and women's sports. Now it is dogma that men who identify as women must be allowed in women's locker rooms, to shower and change with the women, and to compete with them. Why not just repeal Title IX? What use does it serve?
Why do we see stories about drag queens who insist on their right to read to little children, to put on drag shows for them which include kids stuffing money in their underwear? Why do we never hear of them in rest homes or hospitals? What is their obsession with reading only to little children? I don't care if it is only one in a thousand; when good cops don't turn in bad cops, they are no longer good cops. When good drag queens don't object to the bad drag queens, they are no longer good drag queens.
"I oppose child genital mutilation because it is almost always the result of children being brainwashed by woke teachers."
I don't think that is the explanation of circumcision.
No, not at all. But the consequences of circumcision are slight compared to transgender surgery and chemical castration.
I suppose I should have said that I don't include circumcision in "genital mutilation" even if it is, technically. It's like "shooting victim". Trump got a bandaid on an ear. JFK died.
It is, however, by far the most common form of genital mutilation in our society and thinking about your view of it is a possible test of your view of other forms.
While circumcision is significantly more common—roughly 100,000 circumcisions for every 1 gender "mutilation" (as you call it) performed on minors—the psychological stakes differ greatly. Approximately 4,000 minors in the U.S. die by suicide annually, and research clearly shows that minors experiencing gender dysphoria have substantially higher suicide attempt rates compared to their cisgender peers. No reputable evidence suggests irreversible genital surgery is being conducted on two-year-old's absent medical necessity.
Suppose that the suicide rate is 1/10,000 minors per year, very roughly consistent with your numbers, and twice that for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. A sex change operation then reduces the chance of suicide by .0001, which is a pretty small gain relative to other effects of the operation, such as the inability to father or bear children.
Also, you have not offered any figure on suicide rates after sex change.
Do you have suicide statistics after transgender surgery? Your statistic is meaningless without anything to compare it with. And what does "minor" mean -- does it include 19-year-olds, for instance, as many news reports like to say for "Police shoot teenager"? 4000 suicides is 4000 too many, but there are roughly 50,000 suicides every year, and if "minor" includes, say, everyone below 18, that's 1/5 the expected life expectancy but 1/12 the total suicides, which makes it 2.5 times better than normal for a back of the envelope comparison.
"Now dogma is that there are 57 genders which can be changed on a whim."
That is not a correct description of the dogma you are attacking. The claim is not that gender can be changed on a whim, it is that gender is not fully determined by XX/XY genetics with the result that some people are born with a different gender than implied by genetics and genitals and will be better off if their body is altered to fit their true gender. If they could change gender on a whim they could change their gender to fit their body, which would be a lot easier and less expensive.
It is easy to make people you disagree with look stupid if you get to invent bad arguments for them instead of dealing with the arguments they actually make.
Similarly, talking about two year olds choosing chemical castration may make you feel good but unless you actually have evidence of puberty blockers being given to two year olds it only makes reader less willing to take you seriously.
Very much along the same lines that you offer for not taking the people you argue with seriously.
My "57" is ordinary Joe Isuzu hyperbole, but one need only look at official pronoun lists to see the concept originated with them, not me. What is not hyperbole is that some of these wokidiots have claimed they can change gender on a whim. "Gender fluidity" is their term, not mine. As far as I know, no one has ever suggested "gender staticky" as a valid concept.
As for giving puberty blockers to two year olds, it is NOT a joke or a lie that some wokidiots have said that two year olds are capable of deciding their gender, and considering how several states have made it criminal child abuse for parents to not "affirm" their children's pronouns and need for "affirmative" surgery, it is not much of a stretch at all to imagine the wokidiots pushing it on two year olds at some point.
They've gone from "genetically determined so gay conversion theory is evil and so are female genital mutilation and voluntary chemical castration for pediphiles" to "teachers can recommend chemical castration and genital mutilation surgery and parents go to jail for opposing it" in just ten years. It is not at all far-fetched to think what would be "moral" in another ten years.
There is a large difference between "it is not much of a stretch at all to imagine" someone doing something at some point and claiming that it is actually happening or that people are actually arguing for it. You are getting outraged at extrapolated excesses from your imagination. I also enjoy self-righteousness but try to avoid indulging that taste — it is a dangerous drug.
If you don't see the problem, think about how you react to people on the left talking about Trump putting left-wingers in concentration camps. They too are extrapolating.
I extrapolated from the trend of wokism over the last 10 years. Every extrapolation I have seen regarding Trump and dictatorship, concentration camps, and so on has been based on the same outrage that calls him literally Hitler, a real Nazi, and so on. If I were extrapolating on that level, I would have called them Dr Mengele long ago.
This popped up today. I did not dream up this gender fluid nonsense.
"A young poet pretended to be ‘a gender-fluid member of the Nigerian diaspora,’ and wrote intentionally bad poems. He says he got 47 of them published."
https://www.thefp.com/p/white-man-who-pretended-to-be-black-poet
So I'm going to slightly defend child genital mutilation from two aspects that weren't mentioned by others here while up front stating I agree with your overall point that I find it's average proponent to be a hypocrite given their dogma changes with the wind; like people's who for years arguing abortion was ok as long as it was before the point of viability but then as the point moved farther and farther near the point of conception (conceivable in the near future) all of a sudden magically it's not about non-viability, i.e. they never believed that in the first place, it was just a cop out. I'm also not going to dig into one of them as my view on it are well known on here and other places where many commenters here frequent on it. On the genital mutilation front, the point nobody here pointed out is how the pro-circumcision crowd (female AND male) are generally on opposites sides of the pro-tranny crowd and to such a level they can't even form a bootleggers and Baptist coalition though objectively they both want the same physical right hence why it's all BS to your point on both sides if you are approaching it from a non-religious aspect.
The first one, which I'm not going to rehash, is you have to have a belief children have any rights at all. If you don't, and I don't as I don't think it's ethically defensible any more than animal rights or plant rights, then parents are free to whatever they wish to their property, genital mutilation and all. Sure that sucks for some kids but most kids will turn out fine as that was the norm for most of human history anyways.
The second one is we need to have a talk about the word harm and what that actually means and that is specific to the specific procedure, it's not all the same which is what people try and reduce this argument too (which is fair if you believe in absolutely bodily autonomy but very few people do, especially for children; but if that is your hill, I'll support you on that one).
For example 81% of all American men have been "genitally mutilated" as Dan Savage and his ilk like to push yet most of us turned out fine and when we didn't, it probably wasn't a result of male circumcision. Likewise the objectively net positive benefits of male circumcision aren't in dispute hence the reason it's often recommended for adults whose parents were dumb enough to not do it for them, the equiv of anti-vaxers. It reduces your chances of getting HIV to effectively zero as an inserting partner only, it vastly reduces penile cancer, it's better for men's mental health (though this is more because of teasing and self confidence), and especially among people with mobility issues or demented (i.e. senior citizens with Alzheimer's) as it prevents serious infections which can, AND DOES, kill them due to the extra maintenance requirements. The amount of harm prevent by male circumcision vastly outweighs the harm even in the most wild liberally aggressive stats Mr. Savage wants to fabricate, I mean quote.
Likewise female circumcision which has none of the positives outside self esteem, you still have to weight the harms and in that case, the specific implementation. Some tribes remove the entire external clitoris (though they can still orgasm) whereas others just do a symbolic "nic" of the labia. If you are a child rights sort of person there is probably a case for banning the former but not the latter which is the equivalent of tattoo, scarring, or piercings. Sex change operations when it's non-obvious (i.e. external obvious hermaphrodite at birth) is a challenge because it's permanent but then again, you have to determine the harm or not and if it's culturally induced (i.e. we are victimizing them) or actual biological harm. Also don't forget the 85% of women whom have had their ears permanently mutilated as children by their mothers. Harm is what matters here, or should, not the ick factor.
I can respect the no rights camp and I can respect the bodily autonomy camp but I can't respect the icky camp. And honestly I can't respect the harm camp either in practice because lets face it, nobody really cares about actual harm to children, it's just a mask for the ick people.
Quite a spiel, and I have no idea of the medical or health benefits, other than taking your word for it until something more definitive comes along, such as resorting to Wikipedia.
But I will argue about children having rights and not just being parental property. I'm pretty sure you don't include murder in your parental rights over children, or rape, or, getting closer to home, amputating an arm so they can get a role in a remake of the fugitive, and I'm pretty sure you'd consider it a crime for a parent to push their kid off a balcony if he identified as Superman.
I know almost nothing about the mechanics of female circumcision or even female genital mutilation when it was such a horrible crime 10 years ago. But male circumcision is nothing like chemical castration or transition surgery in either direction. The transition proponents like to trot out Jewish circumcision as an example of why transition surgery is no big deal, and that is just another example of their hypocrisy and untrustworthiness.
100% agree with your last point in that the entire argument is basically disengious by the transition people.
Just for the record though ,"I'm pretty sure you don't include murder in your parental rights over children, or rape, or, getting closer to home, amputating an arm so they can get a role in a remake of the fugitive, and I'm pretty sure you'd consider it a crime for a parent to push their kid off a balcony if he identified as Superman", I do. Children until emancipated are property, just like animals, just like the garbage I just threw away. I am 100% a pater familias person, i.e. absolute parental rights. I'm not a humanist, rights apply to full members of society.
To tie that back to your point above, there is absolutely no moral difference besides iky'ness between a first trimester abortion and a sixtieth trimester abortion as either you can kill your kids at whim or you can't. It's why I find pro-abortion people to be hypocrites even worse than pro-trans people.
Ah well, we part ways on children being mere property. My opinion is that they are real people, but too immature to make some decisions for themselves. The more they mature, they more decisions they can make for themselves, and at some point, they realize they're making all their own decisions and are adults.
Every animal tries its best to help its children grow to adulthood. Amoeba don't divide unless there's sufficient food. Turtles and other reptiles / whatever bury their eggs to protect them. The only infanticide I am aware of is primitive tribes who can't afford the unproductive extra mouths to feed of twins, cripples, or incapacitated elders. I also know that some male lions and chimpanzees kill the remaining offspring of new mates, presumably to rid the world of the new mate's prior mate and to focus her resources on his new offspring, and I can at least understand it even if I don't like it.
Killing children just ... because? No, I don't buy it. As I understand it, paterfamilias were also expected to strangle females of the household who had had the temerity to allow themselves to be raped. Whether that was children only, or included sisters and mothers, I do not know.
The only problem with treating children as real humans is the wrongness of treating birth as some magical moment which endows them with humanness. The Japanese counted years since New Year's Day for age, maybe others did too, but as far as I know, most societies celebrate birth days, not conception days. Logically, if I don't think birth is magical, I ought to be anti-abortion, but not being a woman, I have never had to face that dilemma. The most I will say publicly is that I think anti-abortion laws are unenforceable, and I despise unenforceable laws.
I replied to a different comment on this subject, and have to slightly amend this comment. It's my personal opinion only, albeit I think shared by the vast majority of people in some degree. I think most non-wokies tolerate spanking, for instance, and other minor corporal punishment, as none of their business, even if they find it distasteful or disgusting. I think very few would go to the extreme of tolerating murder, rape, torture, or other extremes, as shown by the widespread revulsion of genital mutilation surgery.
Let me try to walk you through some of the opposing positions and show you how they seem entirely reasonable if you believe somewhat different facts:
- Firstly, most proponents tend to agree with you up to a point about surgery on genitals. Generally surgery on genitals is recommended to be postponed until adulthood or late teens. It is not normally performed on small children. I have heard of examples of breast reductions being performed before adulthood, but breast reductions are already performed on teenage girls for non-gender related reasons like gigantomastia, and no one seems to have an issue with that.
- To a proponent of gender affirming care, what matters is choice. People deserve to have the kind of genitals they want. Whether something is surgery or "mutilation" is determined by what the subject of the surgery wants and what will allow them to live a good life. African-style genital mutilation is a terrible crime because it is designed to make women's lives worse in order to make them more appealing to men, not just because it involves performing surgery on body parts. If performing surgery to make a body part different than what it naturally would be is "mutilation," them fixing a cleft palate or amputating a vestigial tail would be mutilation.
Don't you already agree with the other side that different genitals are good for different people? If you think that surgically converting a penis into a vagina is "mutilation," do you also think that all women are born mutilated by nature, since they have naturally occurring vaginas? Of course you don't! You understand that different genitals are good for different people. Is it that hard to imagine someone going one step further and concluding that there is some tiny minority of people whose natural genitals aren't good for them?
- The problem with arguments that puberty blockers and hormonal treatments are "irreversible" is that going through natural puberty is also irreversible. I don't think anyone disagrees with you that it would be better if there was some way to postpone decisions until the people in question had fully developed adult minds. But that isn't always possible.
I'm not going further down on your arguments because I'm not trying to change your mind on the issue. I actually agree with you that some large percentage of young transitioners are probably hypochondriacs who have convinced themselves they have gender dysphoria, and that much tougher screening is needed. What I am trying to do is show you how, with slightly different assumptions about the facts, their views sound eminently reasonable and human.
I've said why I don't believe proponents of genital mutilation have any principles:
* Their positions now and 10-15 years ago are diametrically opposed.
* Their secrecy with regards to teachers and parents show they are afraid of contrary opinions and think teachers have more rights than parents when it comes to children.
* They think children are too immature to handle such temporary things as drinking, smoking, and drugs, yet mature enough for irreversible decisions like mutilating their genitals.
I trust nothing from genital mutilation proponents except to continue being hypocrites. I put no stock in any of their arguments. And considering how their professed "beliefs" have reversed in the last 10 years, I see no reason to expect their "beliefs" to be anywhere near the same 10 years from now.
You seem misinformed. LGBT activists do not appear to me to have changed their messaging about whether someone is "born that way." They seem to think that people are innately trans and have been since birth or early childhood. They certainly do not think you can choose your gender. They think all the however-many genders they say there are this week are a naturally occurring part of human variation, not something someone they made up. I'm skeptical of this, but it's consistant.
I think what might be going on is that since you think the extra genders are made up, you assume they do too. Like David said in the OP, it's sometimes hard to imagine other people believing different facts.
The secrecy can be explained by paranoia. Teachers are afraid (sometimes correctly, although their fears are probably exaggerated) that parents who find out their children are trans might hurt them. The reason for secrecy is motivated by concern for the child's welfare and rights, not a belief that teachers have more rights than parents.
How do you explain the radicals who change their gender identity for seemingly no real reason? They clearly think it is psychological, not physical.
They exercise crimestop when their beliefs contradict observable reality. Kind of like who the feminists knew enough not to ask why there were separate men's and women's leagues until the tranies called their bluff.
"Don't you already agree with the other side that different genitals are good for different people? If you think that surgically converting a penis into a vagina is "mutilation," do you also think that all women are born mutilated by nature, since they have naturally occurring vaginas?"
That would be a good argument if we really had the technology to convert a man to a woman, but we don't.
Well, it would only be a good argument if we believed that young children should be able to undergo such procedures.
And that parents should be allowed unlimited leeway with their children to approve of such (let alone that young children should be able to decide this for themselves).
I sincerely doubt ANYONE believes the latter, at least for young enough children.
Because I have yet to meet or hear of a single person, no matter how leftist, who believes parents should have the right to unlimited beatings of their children.
So the leftist argument here may well have some credence if we are talking about 16 or 17 year olds, but it is immoral and non-reasoned contradictions when it involves younger children.
The person whose argument I was responding to already wrote: "Generally surgery on genitals is recommended to be postponed until adulthood or late teens." His argument is not about such surgery on children.
Ok, as far as that specific response.
But elsewhere on this page that person *does indeed* argue for such surgery on children.
Search for “irreversibility” to see for yourself.
Peter elsewhere in these comments thinks of children as pure property, to the point that parents should have the leeway to kill or mistreat their children for any reason. I'm paraphrasing, probably badly.
He may have claimed something to that effect for the sake of argument, but sorry, I don’t believe for a minute that he *actually* holds that view.
> To a proponent of gender affirming care, what matters is choice.
But whose choice? And on what basis?
What I see when I see "gender affirming care" is something like this: here's a child who has, say, XY chromosomes and male biological development, but who likes to play with dolls and wear dresses, say. And the adults around him tell him that means he's really a girl and needs "gender affirming care" to be healthy. Is that the child's choice? Or the adults' choice? What if the adults just said, sure, it's perfectly okay to be who you are in the body you're in and choose to play with dolls and wear dresses? Would the child still think they needed something to "fix" their body? Or would they choose to keep the body they have as long as they're allowed to choose to do the things they like to do?
The problem is that we don't know the answer to that question, because nobody ever gave the child the option of just being okay with the way they were in the first place. Nobody ever even told them it was possible for it to be perfectly okay to have XY chromosomes and male development and like to play with dolls and wear dresses. So they never had a choice. They just had to take the consequences of the choices the adults around them made.
"The problem is that we don't know the answer to that question, because nobody ever gave the child the option of just being okay with the way they were in the first place. "
Are you saying that no boy has ever been allowed to grow up with interests more common with girls? Sex change operations are a recent development, effeminate men are not.
> Are you saying that no boy has ever been allowed to grow up with interests more common with girls?
No. But boys who have been allowed to do that are not going to be subjected to "gender affirming care" by their parents or other adults. They're going to be allowed to be who they are in the body they were born with. Those boys and their parents are not who my comment was talking about.
Your comment was that we do not know the answer. We can't know the answer for that particular boy but we have information from the experience of other boys.
Would you say that we don't know the effect of any medical treatment, an antibiotic or vaccine, because we don't have evidence in advance on what would happen to that patient without it? That seems the equivalent to what you are saying.
And by every other legal comparison, children are too immature to ever make that choice. To allow them the choice of irreversible genital mutilation, but not to experiment with alcohol or tobacco even a little, is nonsensical. The hypocrisy on that alone is enough to distrust every single thing they claim.
Whether you distrust the person who makes an argument is irrelevant to whether the argument itself is correct. Argumentum ad hominem is a fallacy. If someone dishonest says that 2+2=4 it is still true.
Probably most things most people say are true. It's cloudy today. It's a long way to Tipperary.
But when someone has a track record of hypocrisy and nonsense on any particular subject, I don't trust them on anything else they say about that subject.
This is the same as impeaching a witness in court, except they have impeached themselves.
But do you believe the proponents of both free immigration and medical transitioning support those policies because they genuinely believe that the benefits outweigh the costs, or do you think they believe they actual prefer the negative outcomes that you think are the most likely to happen?
You didn't ask me, but I will offer this possibility when it comes to transitioning kids: those who support it think the benefits outweigh the costs because they don't experience the costs and get tremendous benefits from virtue signaling. The aftermath of what happens to transitioned kids is ignored; everyone cheers and claps when it happens then the kids are ignored afterwards in favor of the next in line, while those who deeply regret it later are screamed down.
Yep, you just summed up pretty much all laws meant to "protect the children" quite well. I remember over on Volokh Conspiracy there was a conversation about the recent Texas porn age verification case and someone quite rightly asked "What exactly are you protecting the seventeen year old man from who both wants the porn and is already legally sexual active. Did anyone ask him, you know, the 'victim'". We really need to redo most "child" laws one day and realize a 17 year old isn't a infant, nor is an eight year old.
Sorry, were you responding to me? I am not sure if I am not understanding how your comment relates, or seeing it from the wrong angle. I think the connection is that if we don't actually account for the harm to the victim, or even ask them about it, we are going to screw up the law, making things that are not very harmful too illegal and things that are very harmful too legal. I am only starting on my morning coffee so I am not sure :)
It's late here so opposite lol, I'll re-read in the morning, maybe my drafting was shit lol.
I should expand on "the woke brigade has no principles". I base that on all the dogma changes over the last 10-15 years concerning genital mutilation, chemical castration, and men in women's sports. I frankly do not believe that any rational person can actually believe that men belong in women's sports. The disparity in muscle mass doesn't suddenly disappear just because some opportunistic 3rd-rate male athlete proclaims himself to be a women. Putting tampons in grade school boys bathrooms is virtue signalling. Letting male boxers beat up women boxers is virtue signalling.
One of the results of having principles is consistency. The woke brigade's only consistency is having no principles.
“The woke brigade's only consistency is having no principles”
Well, they have at least one:
They are for “the oppressed.”
As you yourself alluded to in at least one prior comment, it really is the common thread amongst today’s leftists.
Now if only they had consistent definitions of who the oppressed and oppressors are!
But they do.
The oppressed are the ones on THEIR side.
The oppressors are on the other side.
When push comes to shove, anyone who disagrees with them is an oppressor, because supporting oppressors.
In that sense alone, they are very similar to how we “normies” who care at least some amount about civilization vs. barbarism treat (actual) terrorists and terrorist supporters.
P.S. if actually interested, go read up on “intersectionality”. It describes 95%+ of how they determine who is “oppressed”. It is most definitely a rich westerner in Christian heritage countries lens used for said definition, which is part of how it can incorporate Muslims and even Islamists.
They are separate categories.
I believe the woke brigade has no principles and don't believe anything but what their "leaders" tell them. I don't believe they have ever thought the issue through. I believe that all anyone would get from asking them would be ranting and screaming and a rush to cancel their inquisitor.
I believe most open boarders have bought into the oppressed-oppressor ideology, and while most probably do just think of the (foreign immigrant) children, as with Obama and his dreamers, the real rabble rousers want to disrupt current society, just as the Free Speech Movement and the anti-Vietnam War protestors of the 1960s were led by people who hated the system and wanted to disrupt it at least, and some wanted to destroy it, but none of them had given any coherent thought to what practical reality could replace it.
Some people suggest these rabble rousers feel guilty about their luxury white-privilege oppressor upbringing and want to atone for it by leading the oppressed to freedom. It may or may not have some truth to it, but I don't think it matters in the end.
I would add that most people don't make the distinction inside their arguments (or apparently their heads) of the open borders vs boarders aspect, and so assume that new immigrants will assimilate to the new culture as immigrants in the past did, i.e. when laws were still enforced.
Recent events seem to support that assumption. There was a fear for a long time that immigrants akd their descendants, especially non-white ones, would permanently support left-wing politicians (similar to how African Americans have overwhelmingly voted Democrat for several decades). The last few elections indicate this is not happening. Trump and other right-wing politicians have picked up increasing shares of those demographics. Any left-wing bias those communities have appears to be temporary and soon fades. The idea that an influx of immigrants would turn America into a left-wing one-party state has been discredited.
In spite of this revelation, I don't see Democrats or Republicans significantly shifting their views on immigration. This is evidence that those views were always sincere and not instrumental. Democrats are pro-immigration because they sincerely believe immigration is good, not as a cynical ploy to get new voters. Republicans are anti-immigration out of similar convictions.
Alternatively the views were not sincere, were instrumental, but based on mistaken beliefs about the political effect of immigration.
I don't think that "the idea that an influx of immigrants would turn America into a left-wing one-party state has been discredited," or that the assumption that immigrants assimilate to the host culture is supported by recent events at all. You cite changing voting patterns, but blacks are hardly immigrants, and the swing hasn't been huge; it isn't as though blacks are 50/50 voting between the two parties. Likewise Hispanics, although there the proportion of more recent immigrants is higher.
Further, it isn't at all clear that the changes in voting patterns haven't been of a more obvious causal set, the obviously awful state of cities run by democrats and the exaltation of deviant behaviors. Democrats (the party) going way off the crazy end of the scale and alienating voters shouldn't be taken as evidence that the voters themselves changed.
Of course assimilation isn't just whether or not immigrants vote D and R is similar ratios. Culture has a lot more to it than that.
Immigration proponents do not distinguish between open borders (anyone but the sick and criminal can come in and they are on their own, pre-1900 style) and open boarders, where government entices the lazy and criminal with room and board, cash, health care, and other assorted welfare. They also fly in refugees who don't particularly want to go to the US, they have no choice in where the end up, neither do the locals, and when they get here, they hate the place.
Proponents also refuse to admit the culture clash is a real problem, as with the British Pakistani rape scandal, or Omar or one of her squaddies giving speeches about her goal in office is supporting Somalia, not the US, not her district. Dumping 10,000 immigrants on a city of 60,000 is dumb, yet proponents pretend it didn't happen.
“Opponents of ‘gender affirming care’ seem incapable of imagining that anyone would believe that some minors benefit from such care.”
I *really* wanted to “like” your comment, since I mostly agree with the rest of it. But the quoted piece is a false strawman.
I could describe at length, but I will focus solely on the obvious: the phrase “gender affirming care” is a euphemism to assert that irreversible chemical and surgical interventions on children are acceptable medical practices.
THIS in fact is the overwhelming thing most of the “opponents” you cite object to. Not the various other practices that may or may not be incorporated, and may or may not be done well some fraction of the time.
We don’t allow such choices for or about minors in an inordinate number of other areas - smoking cigarettes, or consuming alcohol, to pick two obvious ones. But the leftists in the medical community use that phrase to assert that chemical and surgical procedures on children are perfectly acceptable.
Dude, when we are talking about children, all due respect, it is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT if some - even 49%, even if it were 75% - minors “benefit” from such “care”, even if that could be unequivocally “objectively” determined over each child’s entire lifespan.
It is a complete bastardization of the Hippocratic oath.
"I could describe at length, but I will focus solely on the obvious: the phrase “gender affirming care” is a euphemism to assert that irreversible chemical and surgical interventions on children are acceptable medical practices."
And the fact that he put it in quotation marks means he is using as a label, not asserting that the label is a correct description of what it labels. The usual term for the practice is "scare quotes."
Your response is an argument against the practice but has nothing to do with the point he is making, as should be obvious if you read what he said instead of taking it as a signal that he is a member of the enemy tribe and responding accordingly.
I have a partly written comment on tribalism in my Substack's comment threads and comments on this post are providing multiple examples.
I did not try to address the entirety of his OG comment on opponent objections to “gender affirming care” providing SOME benefit to (some) minors in this specific response; my responses are long enough as it is…
Had I done so, I would have pointed out that those in favor of such “care” could argue - and frequently do - that there are a whole range of interventions covered under that deliberately vague label, some of which I have little doubt provide some benefit to some minors, and for the sake of argument may well provide real benefit to most/all minors.
But this obscures that the most strenuous objections of most “opponents” is to chemical and surgical procedures, and not about all those other aspects under the umbrella “gender affirming care”.
Now it certainly could be the case that *your* seemingly implicit assumption - given your use of the phrase “scare quotes” - that he was referring *solely* to those surgical and chemical procedures with his claim is correct.
But FWIW here I assumed the more expansive definition of the term “gender affirming care” that leftists usually mean when they use that phrase.
I *do* concede that it is very difficult for any of us to know what his meaning/intention was, either in his OG claim, or in his follow-up responses, or even whether his intended meaning of the phrase changed from response to response.
Yet another of the rhetorical “advantages” of the use of such phrases.
It's the irreversibility of it which sets it apart from smoking and alcohol and signing contracts and almost everything else which minors are prohibited from doing.
Further, basing it entirely on what a kid says is the flimsiest possible rationale for any such "care". No one would allow parents to push their kid off the roof if he identifies as Superman, or amputate an arm so he can star in a high school play of The Fugitive.
I agree the irreversibility is the key.
My point in citing cigarettes and alcohol was mostly in support of another of yours, which is not just society as a whole, but especially these same leftists favor all sorts of those (mostly reversible) restrictions on what minors can do or decide for themselves, but claim that this one is different.
If in fact the argument was coming from “pure” libertarians who believe either children or their parents have absolute rights to do whatever they want to children’s bodies, then it would be a somewhat different argument, mostly a moral one.
But of course I don’t believe that even a single such advocate fits that description.
The problem with the "irreversibility" arguments is that they also apply to normal puberty. It is a process just as irreversible as gender affirming care. The choice isn't between kids going through an irreversible process or not. They're going through one one way or another. The choice is *which* of two irreversible processes they are going to go through, normal puberty or the artificial opposite sex puberty induced by "gender affirming care." Once they've gone through one, it isn't possible to fully go through the other.
The reason that we can tell kids to postpone things like alcohol and cigarettes until later is that there is no downside to the delay. To make it analogous to gender affirming care, you'd have to imagine a situation where that wasn't the case. For example, imagine you discover some kids with a mutant gene that affects how their body processes alcohol, so drinking it makes them sick. However, if they start drinking in moderation at age 12 their body becomes used to alcohol and the mutant gene doesn't activate. In that case you'd have a dilemma where you'd have to choose between people being allowed to drink underage, or being condemned by biology to be lifelong teetotallers.
“The problem with the ‘irreversibility"’ arguments is that they also apply to normal puberty.”
🙄🙄🙄
So you then are violently opposed to abortion, since it is irreversible?
Or you are for late term abortion because “the problem with allowing a child to be born is that it may kill someone else”?
“Gender affirming care” for children is a euphemism for the indefensible.
Your argument is not an argument, it is a tautology.
But I am curious: point blank, yes or no: do you believe in the Hippocratic oath? No hedges, just answer the question.
If no, nothing more to discuss.
If yes, tell me how it POSSIBLY squares with “gender affirming care” - even if for the sake of argument one is confident that said care is the right thing fully 90% of the time?
"So you then are violently opposed to abortion, since it is irreversible?"
He has just argued that the fact that something is irreversible is not a conclusive argument against it.
In order to contribute to a conversation you have to read the comments you are responding to.
I readily concede that my abortion position example was fairly weak.
Per my other response, the context does matter. Absent the context, I agree with your critique 100%. Even in context, however, I concur that it was not a particularly good argument.
But please don’t confuse my weak argument here with the idea that I had not closely read his words and their entire context within this page. Whether my interpretation and assumptions match yours or not.
"I readily concede that my abortion position example was fairly weak."
More precisely, it made logical sense only if you had reversed his position, thought he was arguing that one should never do something irreversible when he had actually argued against that claim.
A more plausible explanation of what you wrote was that you interpret all arguments as tribal cheer leading. He rejected an argument made by the right, therefor he was on the left, therefor he could be attacked on any issue you disagreed with the left on whether or not he had said anything about it.
I'm sorry, I do not follow your argument. The Hippocratic Oath doesn't say that doctors should be extremely risk averse or be biased towards inaction.
There is a common medical maxim, "First do no harm," which is often incorrectly attributed to the Hippocratic Oath, but is actually from something else Hippocrates wrote. Generally that maxim is taken to mean that doctors should carefully weigh risks before they do something, not that they should obsessively avoid harm like one of those literal-minded robots from a bad science fiction movie. If you took "First do no harm" literally that wouldn't just prohibit gender affirming care, it would prohibit everything. All medications have some risk of negative side effects and all surgeries carry some risk of injury or death.
Yes, dude, as you clearly understood I was referring to the “First do no harm” core ethical principle of/behind the Hippocratic oath.
And thank you for the sophistry I should have expected from you in responding to that point: jumping to the 99.9999% confidence level strawman rather than the ~96%-99.9% confidence level it is well understood to mean (quite similar to the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard we have for criminal trial convictions). 🙄
Which is why I specifically used the 90% confident example. But let me make it easier/harder for you: what if the doctor’s confidence level that it would do this patient no harm was 80%? Should the irreversible surgery still be performed? Your previous answer strongly seems to imply that so long as the confidence was above 51% your answer is yes.
P.S. Separately, I *do* appreciate the education about the phrase not being actually a part of the Hippocratic oath proper.
So to start, this conversation is actually a good idea of what David is talking about in the OP. I didn't realize that your primary focus was on surgery, specifically, because my understanding is that surgeries, especially ones on the genitals are not commonly or routinely performed on minors as part of gender affirming treatments. So I focused my arguments on treatments that are performed, like hormone treatments. I didn't realize (and correct me if I am wrong) that you believe genital surgery is much more common than I do. Because of that my arguments probably sounded confusing to you.
Now I will answer your question:
-In regards to surgery on the genitals, I think that can safely be postponed until the patient reaches adulthood. That will give them more time to think about the procedure and develop good judgement about it. It also just seems safer to wait until the patient is done growing.
My understanding is that this view is the view held by the overwhelming majority of gender affirming care advocates. Surgery on the genitals is typically not done on minors. A doctor performing that surgery should have the same probability estimates that it will benefit the patient as they do for any other major surgery, but they should wait until the patient is an adult regardless.
- In regards to breast reduction/chest masculinization surgery for FtM transpeople, I am in favor of age-restricting that as well. Breast reductions are sometimes performed on teenagers who are still minors, usually for non-gender related reasons like back pain (the child actress, Soleil Moon Frye famously had one while she was still a minor because she was afraid of being typecast as "sexy" characters). I have heard of instances of breast reductions being done as part of gender affirming care, although that is still rare. I think a doctor should only perform such a surgery if they are at least as confident that it will help the patient as they would be if they were doing it for non-gender related reasons. Even then, I don't see that it would do much harm to restrict it to adults as well.
- Hormonal treatments such as puberty blockers and sex hormones are more commonly prescribed for minors (although even then that means teenagers, not little kids), and are a more difficult ethical issue. That is because, unlike surgery, they become less effective the older the patient gets, especially as the patient goes through natural puberty. That was what I was talking about when I said that normal puberty is also irreversible. To get the full effect, the treatment has to be done while the patient is still a minor (even then, however, there are some treatments that just delay puberty rather than change or stop it, so the patient can grow older and more mature and have a chance to reconsider)
Even in that case, though, a doctor prescribing them should be as sure that the benefits outweigh the harms as they are for any similar treatment done for non-gender-related reasons (for example, growth hormone injections to make a short child grow taller).
I hope that answers your question. Let me know if it does not.
TBH the Hippocratic oath has been a dead letter for decades IMHO, it's only brought up when they don't want to do something for personal reasons so it's trotted out to give a veneer of legitimacy. Bury it already.
It's not just socialists; basically everyone decides first what team they're on and then they back-fill everything else, including their reasoning for an argument on any given topic, to suit the answer. Libertarians and socialists, anarchists and conservatives, all do this. Even many people who describe themselves as "independent" still do this.
One consequence, which I have just been observing online, is that if you disagree with an argument by one side you are assumed to be a supporter of the other side.
I have observed this as well, and I have observed it having the effect of sometimes persuading people they are indeed on that other side.
All this business of having views and models and opinions and reasoned arguments is mostly a drama built on top of the more fundamental act of choosing and signalling what side we're on.
This explains for example why American political parties may have relatively stable groups of supporters as well as relatively stable "brands", while the positions they endorse on various issues change like a flag in the wind--and these changes tend to be stuffed down the memory hole, to preserve the sense of group identity over all else. "Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia"
Just a slight defense of Wolff and nothing novel I'm sure but for non-Utilitarian folk, though Wolff sounds like he might have been one, especially those that are religious, there is a fundamental belief, at least on some issues, there actually are good/evil stances and it might be contrary to good/bad policy that objectively benefits the most people. i.e. if denying Muhammad was the Prophet cured cancer tomorrow, I wouldn't expect Muslims to cease to exist nor incorporate that denial into.their religion. Sometimes the right answer is picking the appropriate side, not the best argument at least from a humanist perspective.
(Yes I'm foreclosing the argument that in the case of Islam, listening to Allah is a better argument than curing cancer because that way leads to subjective madness whereas David is arguing there is always (often enough) an objectively good argument even if it's just waiting to be found.)
I agree with the rest of your critique of Wolff there but on that point, just wanted to comment.
My impression is that modern left and socialists no longer consider improving the general well-being of humans a goal. More important are sharp reductions in economic activity and wealth. Lower populations, fewer people in general, less production, smaller homes, no or few cars and airplanes, far less agriculture.
“Bad ideas are not evil, simply wrong.”
I love almost everything about this piece excepted the quoted line above.
I even think I kinda understand the partial truth you meant when you wrote it.
I fully accept that most people with bad ideas are simply wrong, not evil.
But a) that is *most* people, not necessarily all people, and b) there are some ideas that are indeed not simply wrong, but evil.
I’d be surprised if you truly, fully believe the line.
You almost say as much later in the piece. “Communist dictatorship is the one true way” isn’t merely a bad idea, is it?
“For the greater good, abortion should be legal in all circumstances on a 38 week fetus not yet born if that is what the mother and the doctor think best” is merely ‘wrong’?
If you indeed DO stand wholeheartedly behind that above quoted phrase, could you please explain more why you absolutely believe it?
"All he needed was to decide which side he was on." Either this seems overly simplistic or its deeper meaning has flown right over my head.
It sounds like (1) mere consequentialism; and (2) that you have made your moral choice, in some unexplained manner, before choosing a side.
This is not intended as hostile. Sometimes right answers are simplistic.
It is in fact exactly what followers of woke oppressor-oppressed ideology believe.
The oppressed have the right to overthrow their oppressors BY. ANY. MEANS. NECESSARY.
And so, e.g., Hamas is justified in ALL their actions, including the rapes and baby killings of Oct 7th.
To be fair Hamas is justified in ALL their actions, they are in a rebellion and last I checked, they didn't enter into any UN treaties. "Criminals" have no moral obligation to follow the laws of their wardens. The goal is to be successful, not lose with honor to a code they never signed up for.
I'm not sure what Kling axis that is but it's legitimate. But I wouldn't call it oppressed/oppressor here because that would be more like Russia/Ukraine where people are giving Ukraine a pass on their war crimes even though Ukraine DID sign those treaties because they are "oppressed".
Dude, the point above is not about Hamas themselves.
It’s about the fanatical, essentially religious, beliefs of (mostly young, relatively rich, college-miseducated) Western leftists with their oppressor-oppressed ideology. Taught in our universities, and somewhere between tacitly and openly endorsed by all of the leftist establishment leadership now, most certainly university leadership.
My comment was explaining to Ratman why it is that so many young people in our country hold beliefs and advocate positions and approve of actions that most of the rest of us find both insane and deeply immoral.
But I will engage with you no further.
Fair, I read it more as you were condemning Hamas as opposed to the Western students who support them. I.e. Hamas is justifying their own actions because they identify themselves along that axis, not the justification of the outside observer.
My bad.
Do you remember being a kid or being a young adult? When I was a kid I remember that adults were constantly trying nonstop to condition us to not do drugs, not curse, not have premarital sex, not shoplift, not drink, not smoke, etc. In spite of this, pretty much all kids did some of those things. Adults tried to persuade kids to do their homework, study, and do well in school. In spite of this, most of us didn't do as well as they'd have liked us to.
When people say that adults are brainwashing kids to be trans, my first thought is to remember how effective their attempts to brainwashing kids into studying for tests were. Not only were they ineffective, they often backfired. Attempts by adults to get kids to do things often made those things uncool and made kids want to do them less. I don't see any reason why gender identity would buck this trend.
I remember being a kid and a young adult, do not remember most of what you describe. That's partly a change over time — I was born in 1945 — mostly different bubbles, in my case my family. The limit on my access to premarital sex was my inability to get it, due to some combination of very limited social skills and the lack of willing partners, not any restrictions imposed by adults. None of the other things were issues.
On the other hand, two girls at my elite private school did get pregnant, one by her boyfriend (presumably) who married her, one by a teacher who didn't. So if the adults were trying to convince kids not to have sex they were not entirely successful.
So far as your general point, I suspect that the major influence on kids, in the context of trans as of other things, is other kids. I expect that adults come in mainly by their influence on kid culture, not by persuading individual kids to change sex.
Why are there laws making it illegal for teachers to tell parents about their students' personal pronouns and gender identify, and nothing else? Why is it child endangerment for parents to not use their children's preferred pronouns or not approve transgender surgery? IIRC, it is not illegal for, say, Christian Scientist parents to refuse transfusions and surgery and vaccines for their children. Yet pronoun misuse is criminal child endangerment! Something is out of whack.
When woke teachers push children into secret changes which are illegal for parents to ask about, I call it brainwashing.
Most kids do in fact study for tests, and pass tests. Do you still think gender identify doesn't buck this trend?
Kids rebel against their adults' musical tastes, fashions, and other inconsequential matters, not taking tests. Do you think gender identify is inconsequential?
> When people say that adults are brainwashing kids to be trans, my first thought is to remember how effective their attempts to brainwashing kids into studying for tests were.
In a certain percentage of cases they are. In fact their appears to be a correlation between the kids who are successfully brainwashed into studying for tests and the ones successfully brainwashed into having themselves castrated.
I think the best part of this piece is the discussion of the core issue “who has the right answer?” Friedman is correct that most on one side would not endorse the consequences of their ideology as predicted by the other side.
That insight is, I think, the first step to a revival of good faith discourse between those who disagree.
For my part, I think libertarianism and communism are both governing ideologies doomed to failure.
Libertarianism seems inevitably fated to evolve into a feudal and/or oligarchic sewer; market inefficiencies will create compounding concentrations of wealth, creating a new generation of liege lords who will swiftly betray their free market principles in the name of their own interests.
Communism is damned by the limits of computability. Central planning cannot succeed and so the whole enterprise falls apart.
I think “the right answer” is more boring and less dramatic than these ideologies: markets are good at some things and bad at others, so we should let markets function with oversight to handle bad actors, and some taxation/redistribution for commons and social safety nets.
This lands us basically back at some form of state with a representative government and a market economy, but that’s still a large policy space within which there’s a host of level setting problems and enforcement questions. e.g. What’s the best way to fund infrastructure? How should society deal with crime and punishment? Direct Democracy? Republic? What branches of government should exist and how should they interface?
In the spirit of this post, if you think I’m wrong about the consequences of your ideology, or mine has some deleterious issues: convince me
I think you are wrong about both communism and libertarianism. The limits of computability are a problem but Abba Lerner offered at least a crude solution — have your commissars pretend to be capitalists, run a pretend capitalist economy to take advantage of the market's decentralized coordination. The more fundamental problems are incentives and information.
I see no reason to expect a market economy to create a compounding concentration of wealth and mortality has the opposite effect: shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.
What is wrong with your view of the consequences of your system is that we have no way of making it in the interest of actors on the political market to act in the general interest, for familiar public choice reasons. We do have a way of solving that problem in the private mar ket, although imperfectly. With philosopher king rulers some things might be done better by government but we don't have philosopher kings and if there were qualified candidates they would not end up in power.
I think though that still goes to the "computability problem" TBH, i.e. to use a horrible transhumanism term, in the future post-singularity culture, our philosopher king / commissar is our new benovalent omnipotent AI overlord. I think that's partly the draw both Communism and Libertarianism in that both can easily legitimately claim no true Scotsman while conceptually seeing a future where said Scotsman could finally exist.
I've always explained them to laymen like my kids "They are futuristic aspirational political idealogies, they haven't been proven to fail yet unlike representative democracy hence don't dismiss them outright. They may still get their day, even if it's a million years from now".
The biggest flaw I see is you think free markets create oligarchs. It is governments which create them. Someone asked me why I blame government instead of cronies for all the corruption. I told him because without government, corruption would be limited to individual companies, and the corruption would lead to waste and inefficiency and poor market performance, with no government to protect them or bail them out.
The last thing bureaucrats and politicians want is to solve the problems which created their jobs. Where businesses go bankrupt for not solving problems, governments just expand.
I mean, yeah, that’s the *idealized* behavior of free markets, but there’s a long and well documented history of monopolies, duopolies, and cartels (economic, not criminal) demonstrate the limits of laissez faire theory here. I should note that while some monopolies are government induced, e.g. various utility firms, government is not required for such market structures to form.
Monopolies and similar structures break the competition required for markets to freeze out corrupt actors.
Natural monopolies are not inconsistent with laissez-faire theory — they are one of the possible solutions to markets where a competitive outcome is not possible. I am not sure what sort of "corrupt actors" you are referring to.
To clarify: I was trying to say that even in a completely unregulated, zero-government environment, monopolies and market failures would still occur, contra the other comment.
I think the confusion stems from my more colloquial use of “laissez faire theory.” As I say in the prior paragraph: I agree with the theoretical results that laissez faire markets can yield market failures. I meant more that the proponents of deregulation often ignore these failures, or shift the blame in a very “nobody’s tried real communism way.”
By corrupt actors I mean in a very general sense “market participants not playing fair.”
Also, not ignoring your other reply, just busy
The argument I have been making for a long time, among other places here, is that market failures are a problem in a laissez-faire system, but the conditions that cause them are the exception on the private market, the rule on the political market, so shifting decisions from the former to the latter is more likely to increase than decrease the problem.
I don’t know what you include in “playing fair.”
There is no long and well documented history of monopolies created by free markets, other than first movers who inevitably lose their advantage to competitors. The classic scary monopoly is Standard Oil, and that's just propaganda, misinformation. Rockefeller had his monopoly because he drove down prices and produced better products. He hit a peak of 91%, I think, and was already down to 70% or something when the trust busters came after him.
Google is the current bogey man, especially in Europe, but their share is declining and AI competition is taking more market share.
All monopolies are created by governments, either through IP, laws, or favoritism, and always unjustified. Cable TV is a favorite example of natural monopolies, and it is just another lie. Why else would cities sign a monopoly contract with one provider, then be sued by competitors who are willing to string their own wiring and think they can still make a profit?
Public utilities are another. When John Snow traced a cholera outbreak to a single fresh water source in 1854, that area of London had three separate private fresh water suppliers with their own underground pipes. If 1854 London could do that, it could be done today.
Garbage collection is another. My area mandates that every household has to have a contract with their crony trash collector. Last I checked, it was $10/can/week, and my house generates one can of trash every two months. I collect the trash and drive it to the dump 45 minutes away for $18 when I have other errands near there. The county claims their mandate provides efficient service. It does not.
Monopolies are government creations.
Addendum: most problems solved by bureaucracy/governance are not one-offs “we just need to get everybody a doctor’s appointment scheduled for this week and then we’re done,” but rather structural questions “how do we maintain access to quality healthcare for our communities over some indefinite time horizon.”
You can disagree with particular solutions chosen, or the amount of paperwork/spurious information processing required for operations, (I often do!) but saying that they don’t want to solve problems seems reductive to me. A bit like claiming that seatbelts don’t want to solve windshield ejections because you have to keep using them.
To be clear, I think markets should broadly operate with a wide degree of latitude, just not without limit. Absolute free markets lack various error correcting properties that I want, which government can (though it doesn’t always manage it) to provide
Ah, there's the key, finally: "that I want".
Name any error correcting properties that you want but which you think free markets don't provide. It will be something you can't convince people to supply voluntarily.
Well, if your definition includes the *total* absence of government (the point is *quite* unclear), then property rights, the rule of law in general and remedy for fraud in particular are some of them.
[I make no bones that I am roughly a classical liberal “minarchist”, and surely agree with most of your arguments, up to the point you suggest literally no government at all.]
I agree with most of your comment, but I’m pretty sure you are confusing “generic” libertarianism with anarcho-capitalist libertarianism.
You may well even be relatively accurately reflecting DF’s views; I will not speak for him.
But you are *not* accurately using the term “libertarianism” - and at minimum are not accurately describing the views of most of those who self-identify as libertarian - with your claims that it is the relatively extreme anarcho-capitalist strand of what is broadly known as libertarianism.
Very interesting points. I have however also met some libertarian-leaning people who, when I tried to show that Scandinavian healt care systems seems to have better outcomes (like lower infant mortality) for a lower price than the US system came pretty close to saying that they would support even a worse system for everyone if it was necessary to do so in order to uphold the holy principle of private property. Or that there must be some statistical error, since it must be theoretically impossible for any social democratic system to perform better than a free market.
But on average I think this way of thinking is much rarer among libertarians than among socialists.
Since when has the US had a free market health care system? Surely not since 1945.
The single-payer nationalized health care system dreamed of by progressives would probably be less bad for patients than the status quo. And that's saying something.
(To be fair, it would probably produce less new drugs and techniques than the status quo. But the FDA works as hard as it can to prevent such things from reaching patients.)
I admit I don't understand the US health care system at all. at least I get as much as that it is not a true free market system, and such a system might work better.
But, on the other hand, if one is prepared to give the US system the laurels for a higher median income (which I am prepared to give, with the addendum that part of it is explained by larger households and longer working hours) then one must also be prepared to admit that the same effect does not kick in with health care.
Also, I completely agree that a European system with lower medicine costs would lead to less funding for research, but I guess that wasn't the actual philosophy when the system was first designed.
You should distinguish between "the US system" compared to European alternatives and "a free market system" compared to alternatives. Most European countries spend a larger fraction of their income on the welfare state than the US but I don't think they are consistently less free market in other ways. The UK has a less free market medical system than the US, Switzerland I think more.
Going by memory, before Obamacare came in about half of medical expenditure in the US was by government and the other half heavily regulated.
I always thought the Swiss system was interesting. Insurance is mandatory, but consumers can choose their own plans and insurance providers. The state sponsors insurance for people who genuinely can't afford it.
It seems to have some of the best of two worlds, like what might also be achieved by exchanging normal welfare with UBI.
However, I just heard second hand from a Swiss doctor that had lived in Denmark that the one way their system is inferior to the Scandinavian model is that the patient information between different hospitals are not integrated, like it is when the entire system is run by the state.
My quick description of the US system is that it is a bastardized combination of a sort of free market and a government managed system, which has none of the advantages of either and combines the worst disadvantages of both.
I agree 100%.
It does retain the advantage of providing incentives for pharmaceutical innovation and medical device innovation.
Though a freer market - so long as it had proper patent protections - would arguably have even more of these.
Thank your lucky stars that you don't have personal experience with it. It's ... Kafkaesque. And nothing at all like a free market.
Mostly (IMHO) this is because of a US tax policy that health insurance costs paid by employers aren't taxed as income, whereas if the same funds are paid to employees who in turn purchase their own care or insurance, those funds are taxed as income. This creates a huge incentive for employers to partly pay employees in the form of (untaxed) health insurance. And to make that "insurance" not really insurance at all, but just pre-paid health care costs (to maximize the tax dodge). Every doctor visit for sniffles is covered.
Everything else that's broken cascades from that. People lose health insurance when they leave their jobs. There is almost no market for individually-purchased health insurance. And since nearly all care is paid for via these employer-sponsored "insurance" plans (or government equivalents for the poor), and not by patients directly, patients demand "gold-plated" services - they have no incentive to weigh costs vs benefits. Nor do physicians or hospitals - since patients don't complain about high costs, they do their best to provide what patients want (everything regardless of cost). Of course they like it because they can charge and earn more.
The giant insurance firms in the middle, funneling cash from employers to providers, resist these charges by demanding ever more paperwork and justification - to the point where more is spent by providers on administration than on providing care. And the paperwork and administrative rules frustrate sick patients to no end.
The whole thing is a death spiral.
Years ago, I wrote a list of reforms I would make to US healthcare. I think they still hold up today.
Equalizing tax rates on salary and non-salary benefits is #7, and would fix the problem described here.
https://www.quora.com/As-a-libertarian-how-do-you-think-the-US-should-reform-its-health-care-system/answer/Paul-Brinkley-1
Yes, that would fix it. But it would cut insurance companies out of a huge and profitable business, so they fight it. Also medical equipment and supplies mfrs - a price-sensitive market would be much less profitable.
No that change alone would not cut health insurers out of the mix.
Most people would prefer to have health insurance, and in a free (freer) market health insurers would surely exist.
> Everything else that's broken cascades from that.
I'm not sure I agree with that as you state it, although I certainly agree that a lot that's broken cascades from that.
But even if we fix the problem you describe, we still have the problem that what we are taught to think of as "health insurance" is actually mostly not insurance at all. Insurance is supposed to be a way to pool risk among a large population against rare, unforeseen events. But most of what we think of as "health insurance" is not covering that: it's covering either routine, predictable expenses like physical exams and screening tests; non-predictable but routine expenses like going the doctor when you have flu symptoms; and treatment of long-term chronic conditions, which might be "unforeseen" in the sense that nobody can predict whether or when they will get cancer or heart disease, but are not rare since a significant fraction of the population has them. The only parts of our "health insurance" system that are actually insurance in the usual sense are things like coverage against accidents.
These very different things should be handled by very different methods--but in our system, they can't be, because we insist on lumping them all together under "health insurance" and we don't even think about how little sense that makes.
Agree. Above I said "And to make that "insurance" not really insurance at all, but just pre-paid health care costs (to maximize the tax dodge)."
So this (very real) problem is downstream from the tax policy.
I used to have a very simple catastrophic insurance policy. I think I paid everything up to $2400/year, we shared payment up to $3200/year, and they covered everything over (I probably had some small fraction of it, I do not remember). Then Obamacare made it impossible. It really annoys me how insurance has come to mean everything but.
I asked several doctors, pre-Obamacare, how much cheaper they'd be if I paid myself instead of by insurance, and the answers ranged from 1/3 to 2/3 the insurance price. They couldn't be any more precise because they weren't set up that way, but they were in general agreement with "a lot cheaper".
Yes. There are a few physicians here and there who've setup practices that don't accept insurance at all - patients either pay for services or pay an annual fee to cover all services, and the providers don't have to do paperwork. They generally charge much less than insurance costs.
Unfortunately even for them, they have to pay inflated prices for supplies and equipment, because vendors are all selling to conventional buyers who care only about quality and not at all about cost.
The system is much worse than I made it sound above - I just scratched the surface.
Just one example - hospitals have price lists (thousands of pages of indecipherable coded services mandated by government...) that are secret and not shown to patients. But insurance companies negotiate "discounts" from those prices - often of over 90%. So if you don't buy insurance from one of the big insurers you pay the "list prices" that nobody else pays...
There has been a fair bit of economic research on this topic. One key point about the difference in the Scandinavian system and the US was that government home visits for prospective and new mothers are common in the Scandinavian countries, visits that can end in children being taken away from unsuitable mothers. We don't do that here in the US, and most of the infant mortality happens with the kinds of mothers that would absolutely have their kids taken away.
There were also rather large differences in how infant mortality is measured, which at the time I was looking (some 10-12 years ago) reduced the difference a great deal.
I read something detailed several months ago comparing infant mortality, and it took into account everything I had heard of which skewed the results: whether preemies who died were counted as live-born, how long they survived after birth, and so on. The US was not top of the list as I had expected from the previous complaints about the US trying to save earlier preemies than elsewhere. Don't remember where it was, not sure I would even recognize it again if I did find it.
That was a big writeup on OurWorldInData where they tried to correct for different definitions of child mortality. As I remember it the difference between the US and Scandinavia fell slightly when the same definiton was used, from 2.5X to just 2x higher. I also read it, but somehow can't find the link right now, it seems they have taken the article down for some reason.
It might be the number of children removed by child protective services play a larger role, like doctor Hammer suggests. I can't find good statistics comparing rate of child removal, and I have heard both that the US have a higher rate and a lower rate than North Europe. Obviously if the lower child mortality is only caused by removing more children from their parents it would be a lot less of an argument for the health care system.
I thought a quote from Joseph Schumpeter might be germane:
". . . . it is absurd for other nations to try to copy Swedish examples; the only effective way of doing so would be to import the Swedes and put them in charge.”
Well... the US did import a lot of Swedes, they are still around, mainly in Minnesota. You could just put them in charge.
Or heck, the US could do what it does with all the best engineers and start up founders from around the world: Lure them to migrate with slightly higher pay and slightly lower taxes. I mean, I see no reason why the US government would not be able to find 50 experienced Swedish and Danish doctors and pay them to come over and copy their own health care system.
I agree. Except to make the system work, we'd need to import Danish patients as well and get rid of the one's we've got.
I am half Swedish, and I'm still waiting for that tap on the shoulder to let me run the country.
Do you think US patients are worse than Scandinavians? I know that for example obesity rates are higher in the US, which might explain some of the difference in life expectancy. It is because of this I think that it is a better idea to compare infant mortality or maternal mortality to find the actual effect of the health care.
I used to describe Copenhagen as "Beautiful girls on bikes."
Yep, I used to live in Copenhagen, biked every day. Now, living in the country side with a longer commute I have to drive. I absolutely liked being able to bike so much more. I have sen Bryan Caplan refering to engineers in Copenhagen having to bike as evidence that Denmark is actually poor. I think it is much more annoying having to waste time in traffic and then try to find some time to get exercise in the evening instead.