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Jan. 8, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
29:01
588 Positive Obligations - An Example

An excellent critique of one of my articles

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Good morning, everybody.
It's Steph. It's the 8th of January, 2006.
Boy, you know, I tell you, going to work Monday morning, sometimes not the greatest orgiastic goji juice joy on the planet.
I had a wonderful weekend, and thanks to everyone who participated in the show yesterday.
I really appreciate it.
And just a wonderful weekend reading and writing and thinking and chatting with Christina, going for walks and playing ping-pong.
And then I have to slither back to the corporate world.
I gotta tell ya.
Not so double plus good these days.
Anyway, we have plans.
So... I got an interesting email from a fine gentleman named Max, who is a very good libertarian thinker, and he had an opposition to the coma test, and I don't believe that he actually did have this opposition.
I believe that he was working the logical angle, which is, of course, perfectly valuable and valid, and saying that The coma test is not valid because of this reason.
So I thought I'd spend a few minutes talking about this reason and what he said because I thought it was very astute.
And smart observation.
Smart observation.
So... The coma test, just to go over it for like 20 seconds, the coma test is that it would seem counter to common sense, though I'm not even going to bother trying to prove it.
Some things have to be assumed.
It seems counter to common sense to say that...
Someone who's in a coma can be evil or immoral or bad or whatever.
There has to be a neutrality around a non-action, actionable state.
In other words, there has to be a neutrality in moral senses, in the moral world, around somebody who is not acting.
And this is one of the basic intuitive proofs for the invalidity I think I've talked about that before.
We can touch on that again. But if we can just leave that one out for the moment.
We're just talking about adults here.
Then I would say that positive obligations, one of the strongest arguments against positive obligations is the coma test.
And this gentleman who wrote a response to an article I'm working on, wherein I use the coma test, or advocate the coma test, said the following.
He said, well, all you have to do to bypass the coma test is say X positive obligation to the degree that you are able.
To the degree that you are able.
And that is a very good objection.
It's a very, very good objection.
So I thought I'd spend a few minutes on it because it's worth talking about.
And it's exactly the kind of philosophy that I think is wonderful.
Where people come up with good, solid, logical arguments against your propositions.
That's good stuff. He's not insulting me.
He's not calling me mean or bad or...
Foolish. He's not condescending.
He's just saying, hey, here's a way that your coma test falls apart.
Fantastic. So let's take a swing at defending ye olde coma patient and see if we can't make a go of it.
So, in general, I would say that the rule that I'd like to propose or the tendency or whatever I would like to propose in the following response is something like subjective states Essential subjective states require dictatorship.
Essential subjective states require dictatorship.
So, for example, if...
I mean, we need food, and if it is...
If it is subjective, the degree to which we need food, what kind of food, what is our favorite foods, our less favorite foods, and so on.
If the need is essential, but the want is subjective, then you need a dictatorship to even remotely make it work.
So in the realm of food, everybody needs food, but the desire for food and the types of food and so on is all subjective.
And therefore you need, in the sort of Soviet style, a ministry of agriculture that runs all the collectivized farms and ships food around to everyone.
The difference between that style and the free market is that in the free market, the desire for food is objective.
It's not subjective.
It's completely objective.
And that's one of the beautiful things about the free market is that it turns subjective desire into objectively measurable action.
And the action is I buy food and the objective measure is the amount I'm willing to pay for it.
This is something worth mulling over.
I think it's a very interesting point that the free market is around turning subjective desires into objective information.
Or objective action.
How much am I willing to pay for ice cream?
I can be in the Soviet Union and say I want ice cream all day long, or I don't want ice cream and grumble about this or that, or I can be on the board of ice cream distribution and say that ice cream is unhealthy and people shouldn't want to eat it, or ice cream is good, it builds your bones, it's full of sugar, which is good for strong communist oxen soldiers, but all of this is a mere opinion.
And in the realm, it's exactly the same as in religion.
In religion, you have essential things that are subjective.
Essential things that follow God's will.
Subjective, what's God's will?
Nobody knows. It's all made up.
It's all manipulated.
And the more people believe it, the more insane they are.
The more credible they are, the more insane they are.
One of the major problems of religion is it promotes the most insane.
And in my view, the most insane are not the people on the street corners...
Shouting out with megaphones at an entire army of teddy bears.
The most insane are those who perfectly conform to expectation and to social norms, but are deeply insane.
The most insane...
For instance, I saw a Barbara Walters...
On heaven, what is it and how do we get there?
Where she had a token atheist that they used as unflattering angles and so on as possible.
And she was talking to the Archbishop of Canterbury, I think, who was a sweet and pleasant and laughing old man.
And she said, well, what will we look like in heaven?
Will we be younger and so on?
He said, well, I'm expecting you to get my hair back.
Ha, ha, ha. These people are the most insane because they have a duality.
Somebody who's just schizophrenic has taken a break from reality, probably permanently.
That's terrifying and terrible.
It's an organic problem. But they're uniformly insane.
People who are sane enough to know what insane things to say are totally insane because they've really split completely.
That's why I keep talking about parents.
It's morally insane in a fundamental way because they know enough to put their pants on.
They know that you're supposed to wear that little white clip around your neck if you're a Catholic.
A priest, they know enough to know what to say and what sermons to preach and when to show up in time.
So they know enough about reality to work it from a rational standpoint.
But they are preaching against reality completely.
So this is a complete ugly power grab.
I was racking my brain all weekend and talking about it with Christina, trying to figure out the motive behind this woman in the film...
The Jesus camp, the female preacher who was talking to the children, what is her motivation?
If you have any thoughts on that, send them to me.
It's something I can't quite grasp.
I can't even get close to it at the moment.
Either because it's better than I think or it's worse than I think.
It's just a failure of imagination on my part.
But... This question of where there are, particularly where there are essential things.
No revolutionaries march around saying that we need to nationalize the production of bolsters and teddy bears because they're essential, but we can leave food and roads and education in the private hands without government interference.
So there is an essential thing, something that is essential.
is then turned into something subjective, which then is what requires a dictatorship.
So in the realm of religion, the purpose of life, morals, one's relationship to the cosmos, all of these things are fundamentally essential for human beings.
And they are then made subjective.
In other words, they're turned into superstition and away from philosophy.
They're made subjective. And because of that subjectivity, you then create an automatic demand for a hierarchy to organize things.
Science doesn't need a central body of science dudes who determine what is valid and what is not.
Because the lab is reality, not other people's opinions.
You need a Vatican Council to figure out what God said, because God doesn't exist, so they've just got to make a whole bunch of stuff up.
But you don't need a central authority like a government in the market or in science because it's rational exchange of ideas and it makes mistakes, but then it self-corrects.
And so when you have things that are objectively defined, like price in the market, truth in science, or at least accuracy in science, validity in science, you don't need centralized authority because everyone can think for themselves.
Where things are subjective...
And still essential, like the will of the people, social reality, law, the direction of the country, the mind of God, what your parents want in terms of virtue, then you have to have a hierarchy.
So I'm sort of going to put that out there as a principle, and then we'll talk about it in particular with this gentleman's excellent critique of the coma principle, or the coma test.
One sec. Coffee time.
So let's try taking this rule that you have a positive obligation, which is to take care of the poor.
And to bypass the problems of the coma test, we add the appellate phrase to the degree that you are able, to the best of your ability.
You must help the poor to the best of your ability.
Well, that's wonderful because it does bypass the coma test.
Because someone in a coma is not able to help the poor, therefore they're off the hook.
Now, we are going to have to make helping the poor an objective thing.
We have to. Because if the goal of helping the poor is...
We already have a goal called helping the poor, and we have a qualifying clause to the degree that you are able, to the best of your ability.
Now, to the best of your ability is to a large degree subjective.
Is to a large degree subjective.
And if helping the poor is also subjective, then we have a real, total, and true cult.
And the cult of Christianity and Islam and Judaism are to a small degree limited by the fact that people at least have some access to the original text.
And that doesn't mean much in Catholicism, but it does in the Protestant sects.
And it does in Judaism.
And it does in Islam.
No sort of formal pre-structure in Islam.
So, there's some access to the original text, which is why these things keep splitting.
A real cult is where there's no access to anything but the mind of the cult leader.
So, we already have, to the best of your ability, in this positive obligation to help the poor.
If we also add, and to help the poor is completely subjective as well, then we are in a total cult.
Then it's just anything. If you give me a back rub, it will help me concentrate on ideas to help the poor.
And if helping the poor is not particularly measurable, then you can say, well, I'm sending out good vibes to the poor, and that's totally helping the poor.
And if somebody says, well, I don't believe that's the case, they say, you know, don't you squash my Buddhism.
There are monks in Tibet who meditate on poverty and pray for the poor and take psychic yogic journeys to help the poor.
And this, of course, all becomes rather silly.
So we can't have helping the poor be subjective.
You could also say, well, I'm starting a company.
That is helping the poor. I'm making lots of money in spending it.
That's creating jobs. That is helping the poor.
I know that's an economic misnomer, but nonetheless.
So helping the poor has got to be something objective, which is why helping the poor in these kinds of dictatorships, and in this I include the welfare state, always ends up in the transfer of property.
It has to be. It has to be the transfer of property, because that's measurable and objective.
What is helping the poor? Helping the poor is making sure nobody makes less than 10 grand a year.
I know the numbers are a little small, but I just want to work with even numbers that are easy for me.
So this helps us bypass the problem of somebody saying, well, to the best of my ability, I'm sorry, I have migraines, and therefore my ability to help the poor is highly, highly reduced.
Or I've got a hangnail that's really interfering with my concentration.
Or, don't worry, I'm working on a novel that is going to do for the poor what Les Mis did for Operetta.
And so, you have to let me work on my novel, because that's the best way that I can help the poor.
It just becomes a bunch of nonsense, right?
It just makes stuff up.
So, it has to involve the transfer of property, and of course, to the degree with which you are able, is something to do with a graduated income tax, as you pay more, as you make more.
So, let's say that what this translates to in the real world, help the poor to the degree that you are able, is the transfer of property from those who have more to those who have less based on some objective criteria.
We'll just say 10k a year.
And we'll make it real simple to begin with.
If you make less than 10k a year, you get money.
If you make more than 10k a year, you give money to those who make less than 10k a year.
Well, at least this is objective.
At least this is objective.
Now, of course, there's going to be all the exceptions on the planet.
I'm in school. I don't make as much money as I'd like to.
I inherited this money.
I didn't earn it. There'll be lots of people who'll want to put in, excuse me, all the qualifiers of the world about this sort of stuff.
But let's just say that it's an objective, an absolute rule.
Again, we can take all the premises, but the final one, or the first one, where we're Dismissing or at least arguing against the proposition.
So everyone who makes more than $10,000 gives to everyone who makes less than $10,000.
And, I don't know, equal to $10,000?
Who knows? Who cares, right?
Let's just make it a nice, simple slice.
So herein is the challenge.
Now, one of the challenges is that...
You can't propose logically that somebody's moral nature changes in the absence of...
Objective criteria.
So if somebody's a child or mentally retarded, then they have diminished moral capacity simply because they don't have the capacity to reason and their minds are immature or their minds are damaged.
A schizophrenic is somebody who needs to be medicated, not somebody who needs to be punished.
And to the degree to which this is true for crimes or what we call crimes, I can't say.
I would say that if you try to hide your crime, then you're aware that there are consequences, which means that you are aware that it's at least disapproved of, if not wrong, and so there is obviously some degree of choice and so on in that situation.
But I don't know the degree to which Crimes in general are organic in nature.
In terms of brain dysfunction, I would suspect that there are some crimes which are organic in nature, for which treatment is the appropriate option.
There are some crimes which are moral in nature, to which determent or punishment is an appropriate option.
But my punishment preference is always towards exclusion and restitution.
Exclusion from society, the chance to work off your debt through a DRO model, or if you don't work off your debt, the DRO simply pays.
For the restitution.
So if there is an organically testable thing in somebody's nature that has caused them to change, then you can give people different moral categories if those changes are relevant.
Height is not relevant. Ability to process information is.
Physical maturity is.
Because otherwise, you're sort of like somebody who's got one size shoe, and someone comes in who's got those size 14 canoes on the end of their feet, and you try and wedge them into, I don't know, a size 6, and you don't have different shoe sizes for different size people.
That wouldn't really make a whole lot of sense, because people do come in different foot sizes.
So, similarly, you don't, if somebody comes in, you get 10 people coming in who've got size 6 feet, you don't just give them all these different sizes of shoes.
So where are we going to have a different thing, like an adapted moral rule, which is not so much that people shouldn't kill.
Schizophrenics don't get to roam around the world killing at will, unless they're politicians, sociopaths then.
So it's merely around prevention, reduction of danger to others, but without the blame, without the moral blame.
So you can't just say, well, a guy puts on a green uniform or a green costume and now he has the right to kill at will if other people tell him to and who the enemies are and so on.
And you can't do that because, as I mentioned in the article, A man putting on a uniform no more changes his moral nature than painting a rock makes it lighter than air.
It doesn't change its nature. You're just putting another layer on it, a colorful layer.
Paint a rock camouflaged green and see if it'll float, right?
It won't. You don't change the nature of the rock by putting a color on it, and you don't change the moral nature of a man by putting a uniform on him.
And similarly, somebody doesn't have one moral nature when they are making $9,000 and then another moral nature when they're making $11,000.
Or to take it to a more absurd level, it's not a penny's worth of difference between one penny short of 10 grand and 10 grand.
In terms of moral nature, there's not one penny's worth of difference that creates opposite moral obligations.
Especially if the law changes and then it becomes $11,000.
So you're not changing anyone's moral nature.
There's nothing in reality that reflects that.
Nothing testable, nothing objective, nothing measurable.
And therefore you really are assigning arbitrary distinctions.
Opposing... Properties require opposing qualities.
So if a rock falls down because it's heavier than air and a helium balloon floats up because it's lighter than air, the difference is lighter than air versus heavier than air.
So you can have opposing actions.
Falling versus rising. But they have to be supported by opposing properties.
You can't have opposing actions like you have the right to other people's money versus you have the obligation to give other people money.
Those are opposing rights. The right to receive, the right to provide, simply based on an arbitrary amount of money.
That's not logical. And if that's not a good enough argument for you, that's fine.
I have no problem with that. Maybe you say, sorry, it's not logical.
We still got to help the poor. That's fine.
But a moral thesis should stand even in the extremes.
And what that would look like in the realm of the $10,000 split is here's where the highest moral ideal ends up with this proposition that we must help the poor as much as able that translates into supporting their income to $10,000.
You have two guys in a room And one of them has $9,999, and the other one has $10,000.
According to this moral rule, help the poor support their income to $10,000, the highest moral good that could conceivably be achieved is for these two people to stand in a room and hand a dollar bill back and forth to each other.
Because one guy gets 10 grand, he's like, oh, I've got to help the poor.
So he gives the other guy $9,999.
Now that guy has $10,000, but the first guy now has $9,999, so the other guy has to give it back.
Now, if this doesn't trouble you, then I would say that you're more into dogmatism than philosophy.
If it doesn't trouble you, that according to the definition of help the poor...
That it results in the highest moral good being two guys handing a dollar bill back and forth.
That's a pretty weird thing to happen to a moral theory.
And this is the problem with positive obligations.
There also is a second layer of complexity...
Which is, how does society deal with the generally rising wealth?
In a free society, relatively, not that if this was an entire dictatorship, everyone would be broke.
But in a relatively free society, how will society develop with the generally rising incomes?
Without a doubt, what was called poverty in the past has nothing to do with poverty in the present.
Like 99% of poor people in North America have a color TV, a microwave, winter heating, and fridges, and so on.
So, it's hard to understand what is meant by poverty.
And this, of course, was not the case when the poverty laws, income transfer payments, went in first to a large degree in the 1930s.
Or being poor meant no color TV, no TV yet, no fridge, rarely winter heating, and so on.
So there's another subjective layer in what is defined as poverty, which is relative to what?
You have this layer, what is poverty?
Poverty is a very grim word.
Because it gaunt children, trembling, starving, picking up crumbs of bread from the floor by the table of rich people and so on.
It's got this les miserables kind of...
Mythology to it, and of course it's got nothing to do with the poor.
In the North America, it certainly has to do with the poor in other parts of the world.
As society becomes wealthier, what does it mean in terms of the word poverty?
Well, of course, all that happens in Canada, at least, and I'm sure this is true for most of the world, just given the nature of government programs, all that happens in this world is that poverty gets redefined.
So the bottom 20% or the bottom 15%, they're always poor.
And if the standard of living rises, Then you simply raise...
I mean, it's impossible to get rid of poverty.
I mean, the end result, if there was not so much government intervention, would be that everyone would be making a million dollars, but a couple of people would be making $900,000, and those people would be in dire need of poverty programs.
I mean, in sort of real wages.
So there's an enormous amount of subjectivity already in this issue.
Of course, the other question is, does the transfer of money help the poor?
And I would argue, except insofar as it's better to give people food if they're going to starve to death, which is extraordinarily rare in the modern West.
Giving money to the poor I don't find to be particularly helpful.
I think it locks them into their dysfunction.
If it's possible to get them out of their dysfunction, then giving them money is the wrong thing to do.
And if it's not possible to get them out of their dysfunction, then giving them money is the wrong thing to do because what they really need is treatment.
If they're highly susceptible to alcoholism and so on, as certain native populations are, then what is really needed is help in a more proactive and positive kind of way.
And also with some recognition that some people don't want to be helped.
There's always these stories about homeless people up here in Canada, but the fact of the matter is there's more than enough homeless shelters in the In Toronto, for sure, and people just don't want to use them, sometimes because they feel they get preached at, sometimes because there's theft, but most often just because they're crazy, right? They don't know their own best self-interest.
So, overall, I think there is this challenge when you have absolutes, and all moral commandments are absolutes, right?
So, you can't mix in A subjective with an absolute.
Once you mix a subjective in with an absolute, I guess everything turns the color of blood.
So that's an important thing to understand.
When you mix a subjective in with an absolute, violence and hierarchy and dictatorship and dominance and forced submission and so on is the only possible solution to the question of how things get done.
We've already said that they must get done because it's an absolute.
It's a moral absolute. Thou must help the poor.
This is why positive moral obligations are so deadly, because they can't be defined except through the use of force.
They can't be defined except arbitrarily, but people can't accept arbitrariness with essential.
Arbitrary and essential don't go hand in hand.
If it's essential, it must be done.
And so positive moral obligations are really the root of dictatorship.
And again, this gentleman, Max, who wrote me, I'm not suggesting that he holds any of these beliefs whatsoever.
I'm simply responding to a logical critique that he had, which was excellent, and I hope that this makes sense to you.
But positive moral obligations are really the root of dictatorship.
This is why when you look at things like, I must take care of my parents when they get older, you can do that if it gives you comfort.
Of course, I think it will cost you a lot more than you will get.
But you are absolutely contributing to dictatorship in the world as a whole.
And the most fundamental dictatorship, of course, is that of the family.
And this is where positive moral obligations...
Thank you so much for listening.
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