This thought made me more sympathetic to other political factions:
A good way to understand the difference between the three main American political tribes is to look at their attitude towards the problem of social irresponsibility, which let’s define for the sake of argument to be when someone makes a big Life Mistake and thereby causes a lot of damage, most of which borne by the individual in question but part of which is borne by society. Consider as example 1) a single mother of three kids by three different deadbeat dads, who relies on government handouts to get by 2) The kid who went to college and racked up a bunch of debt, but played too many video games and smoked too much weed, so he dropped out, and now wants debt forgiveness 3) The typical couch potato who ate too much junk food and was too lazy to exercise, so is now diabetic and morbidly obese and so needs lots of expensive health care 4) the unwisely promiscuous person who had lots of unprotected sex, contracted HIV, and now also needs expensive drug cocktails.
The three political orientations can be understood by their instinctual response to this problem. The social conservatives want to prevent social irresponsibility by force, law, or regulation. That, in their view, not only protects society from having to pick up a huge tab, but also protects the individuals themselves. The liberals reason that the individual has suffered enough already, and society should step in and help to ease the suffering. After all, Western societies are fairly wealthy and can afford to help out those in need. The libertarians want to build fences. The problem in their view is just the issue of “splash damage”; if a person wants to screw up his own life he should be allowed to do so, as long as he doesn’t screw up anyone else’s. Thus libertarians don’t want government intervention in individual liberty, but also don’t want to have to pay high taxes to clean up the problems somebody else created.
Framed in this way, I personally can see the appeal and wisdom of each of the three tendencies, so I wanted to offer this idea to LW. It might help people win ideological Turing Tests. Let’s not debate which tendency is actually “correct”.
The libertarians want to build fences. The problem in their view is just the issue of “splash damage”; if a person wants to screw up his own life he should be allowed to do so, as long as he doesn’t screw up anyone else’s.
The libertarian’s propensity towards “building fences” is not just or even mostly about shielding society from “splash damage” though; there is an element of giving people good incentives and clearly defined ‘rules of the game’. After all, many libertarians acknowledge that society will be forced to bear some burden from bad individual choices, partly because we do want to step in and ease the suffering, as the liberal would say. There is thus an element of deep skepticism towards the social conservative view that we should “prevent social irresponsibility” by engineering the right sort of policies and social influences; the only intervention that has a chance of working is one that’s closely targeted to be about the misbehavior itself, and about the sorts of consequences that we choose to attach to it.
You can definitely see this in the sort of policies that libertarian promote in practice: the single mother seeking handouts for her kids? We should give her a handout—heck, let’s give everyone a handout, but make it conditional on her taking good care of the kids. The folks who took poor care of their health and ended up with diabetes or HIV? Make sure they can take care of themselves, by promoting HSA’s and HMO’s and even a Singaporean model for healthcare. Clearly this sort of thinking is not just about ‘everyone for themselves’, there’s a lot of societal support involved.
This thought made me more sympathetic to other political factions:
A good way to understand the difference between the three main American political tribes is to look at their attitude towards the problem of social irresponsibility, which let’s define for the sake of argument to be when someone makes a big Life Mistake and thereby causes a lot of damage, most of which borne by the individual in question but part of which is borne by society. Consider as example 1) a single mother of three kids by three different deadbeat dads, who relies on government handouts to get by 2) The kid who went to college and racked up a bunch of debt, but played too many video games and smoked too much weed, so he dropped out, and now wants debt forgiveness 3) The typical couch potato who ate too much junk food and was too lazy to exercise, so is now diabetic and morbidly obese and so needs lots of expensive health care 4) the unwisely promiscuous person who had lots of unprotected sex, contracted HIV, and now also needs expensive drug cocktails.
The three political orientations can be understood by their instinctual response to this problem. The social conservatives want to prevent social irresponsibility by force, law, or regulation. That, in their view, not only protects society from having to pick up a huge tab, but also protects the individuals themselves. The liberals reason that the individual has suffered enough already, and society should step in and help to ease the suffering. After all, Western societies are fairly wealthy and can afford to help out those in need. The libertarians want to build fences. The problem in their view is just the issue of “splash damage”; if a person wants to screw up his own life he should be allowed to do so, as long as he doesn’t screw up anyone else’s. Thus libertarians don’t want government intervention in individual liberty, but also don’t want to have to pay high taxes to clean up the problems somebody else created.
Framed in this way, I personally can see the appeal and wisdom of each of the three tendencies, so I wanted to offer this idea to LW. It might help people win ideological Turing Tests. Let’s not debate which tendency is actually “correct”.
This reminds me of the “survive / thrive” theory of political tribes at SSC.
The libertarian’s propensity towards “building fences” is not just or even mostly about shielding society from “splash damage” though; there is an element of giving people good incentives and clearly defined ‘rules of the game’. After all, many libertarians acknowledge that society will be forced to bear some burden from bad individual choices, partly because we do want to step in and ease the suffering, as the liberal would say. There is thus an element of deep skepticism towards the social conservative view that we should “prevent social irresponsibility” by engineering the right sort of policies and social influences; the only intervention that has a chance of working is one that’s closely targeted to be about the misbehavior itself, and about the sorts of consequences that we choose to attach to it.
You can definitely see this in the sort of policies that libertarian promote in practice: the single mother seeking handouts for her kids? We should give her a handout—heck, let’s give everyone a handout, but make it conditional on her taking good care of the kids. The folks who took poor care of their health and ended up with diabetes or HIV? Make sure they can take care of themselves, by promoting HSA’s and HMO’s and even a Singaporean model for healthcare. Clearly this sort of thinking is not just about ‘everyone for themselves’, there’s a lot of societal support involved.
Why was the diversity of political viewpoints narrowed down to a somewhat arbitrary 3?