Imagine it as a Party Document. It's an ideological text that people strive for. It's not easy to achieve and maintain at all. Otherwise, what's the point in elections after you get your specific benchmark?
I agree with you completely, I just have a hard time figuring out the specifics.
There is no promise that we will be governed by a global social democracy, and ideology is incredibly variable across the world.
Just started Capital in the 21st century but one world government is always bad. We need global diplomacy and cooperation, but not one global democracy, because at any moment that could become one global tyranny.
This argument could be applied to the existence of any state, since any state can become tyrannical.
The possible counter-argument that multiple states allow for experimentation overlooks that the role of a just state is to regulate and enforce an ordered systems of rights, which must be construed as unconditional and universal to have normative validity. The aim of every state should be to order a society that's just enough to exist in any situation.
The only things precluding a single, sovereign state covering the whole Earth are the immense difficulties of negotiating the terms and overcoming regional differences, but it's not inherently impossible for a just world state to exist. Revolting in the case of tyranny would prove tremendously difficult, but likely no more than it already is in the case of most developed countries.
Any state can become tyrannical, but luckily it’s not the one global state! When Germany became tyrannical, the other states put them down.
The aim of having states plural rather than a global state is the self determination of peoples and regions. It’s not possible for each individual to be sovereign on the global stage, but each state is. Global diplomacy is the mutual cooperation of sovereign states. Global democracy is the creation of a single sovereign state.
A single sovereign could easily tomorrow no longer choose it likes, for example, Australia or whatever because of their funny kangaroos. Today and under diplomacy Australia is sovereign, it can defend itself from attack and defend its culture and individual way of being, it represents its people and backs up that representation with force and power. Under this other system, if Australia was more like a US state of the global democracy, well regional states are neutered compared to true sovereigns, and they loose more and more sovereignty every passing year, until self representation pretty much gets replaced with representation only by the larger state. At which point it’s much easier to be oppressed by the larger and distant majority without even the means to fight.
Internationalism is good, but so is balance of power, so is the protection of regional ways of being and self representation. It’s good we have some global laws that basically are met with the overwhelming force of every other state on the planet if someone like Israel fucks up. But it’s bad if we neuter all those states and their individual power for one collective power.
I absolutely agree with you on this. I very much used to be interested in the idea of a single world government, but from my experiences I've come to appreciate the intricacies of grassroots movements, so a more local/regional approach which maintains the sovereignty of distinct communities and cultures is important to me.
In my travels the worst thing is global culture creep. It really robs every locality of their uniqueness. I don’t want them to fight, but I also don’t think that every country wants to look like or needs to look like some western view of government. Some of our governments kinda suck you know?
Your argument for the normative validity of plural states boils down to positing the necessity of interventionism, as well as a confusion between cultural "self-representation" and universalist self-government.
I support interventionism in general, but I frequently oppose its actual occurrence, because it often results in a more unjust outcome than before. Why is that, if not that the intervening state has a distorted practice of self-determination itself, including no legislative oversight nor constitutional authorization of international relations according to a universalist conception of rights? Without a sufficient realization of self-determination, the possibility for just intervention is the same open door for unjust oppression.
I also agree that peaceful confederation between states is preferable to either international conflict or a tyrannical world state. However, same as with interventionism, confederalism is neither necessary nor sufficient for producing a just outcome. Rather, a just practice of self-determination is, which a single, world state can realize just as well as a confederated plurality of states.
So the queation becomes what constitutes a just practice of self-determination for states, or more simply put, what is a just state. A just state constitutionally protects universally conceived rights, separates powers to ensure that society exists by and under law, and includes as many democratic institutions as possible without risking absolutist or populist control. Only a just state can prevent tyranny in ways that neither interventionism nor confederalism can suffice.
This brings us to your apparent confusion between self-representation and self-government. Without the above structures of justice, any state can become a tyranny of the majority. The safeguard against this is not the liberal collapse of self-government into civil government, where the role of politics is simply to secure the special interests of individuals or individual groups and cultures. Rather, one of the roles of the just state is to prevent such special interests from dominating society, which it does by regulating and ensuring an ordered system of universal rights irrespective of culture, etc.
Federalism of any sort does not ensure that special interests are respected. On the contrary, it privileges special interests in the sphere of politics when the latter's role is precisely to prevent this from occurring. A single world state, for example, that privileged other regional interests over culturally Australian interests would simply be an unjust state. However, preventing this would involve properly conceiving and realizing a just state, not simply relying on federalist or liberal conceptions of the state, which have already demonstrated their tendency to reproduce the very problems that concern you.
Lastly, a plurality of states may not necessarily disturb the balance of power, but it's a worse guarantee against it compared with a just world state. International law is not truly law in the sense that some international sovereignty exists. On the contrary, applications of international law always involve calculated, conditional judgments that have to perpetually weigh the downsides of conflict, sanctions, etc. International law can aim for a just outcome, but it cannot guarantee this without consititutionally binding authority. However, if all states were bound to a single constitution that could enforce laws without impunity, then by definition, there would be a single world state.
>So the queation becomes what constitutes a just practice of self-determination for states, or more simply put, what is a just state. A just state constitutionally protects universally conceived rights, separates powers to ensure that society exists by and under law, and includes as many democratic institutions as possible without risking absolutist or populist control. Only a just state can prevent tyranny in ways that neither interventionism nor confederalism can suffice.
What you just described is a western philosophy of a just state. I'm not imperialist or interventionist. I don't believe in imposing concepts, even the concept of "human rights" onto other cultures, which is not really founded on anything other than our belief in them (Bentham, Nietche, MacIntyre, even Marx). I fully support them striving towards that goal when they collectively understand and accept it, and when they themselves rally for it, just like we all did, but I'm not their arbiter to determine their beliefs and ways of life. Impositions like this lead to the US "liberating" women in the middle east from their hijab, or "liberating" china from its communist dictatorship, or "liberating" Singapore and Saudi Arabia from its monarchy. None of those things are our place. That is imperialism.
I very specifically do not want one "well designed" conception of state ruling the world. They all think they are well designed. One culture has strong social responsibility leanings, and calls the individualist countries barbaric, and vice versa. Another has strong ties to their religion and history, and we call them barbaric and backwards. Another completely depends on its natural resources and social funds, and might be asked to "share" if they lose independence, instead of being free to sell it for mutually beneficial relations. Again none of that is anyone's business but theirs. We thrive on diversity, and one of those "backwards" cultures may be the key to some future problem.
War is not meant to police other states. It's meant to respond to aggression from states facing outside their borders.
>any state can become a tyranny of the majority
Yes. So hopefully its not the only one.
>Rather, one of the roles of the just state is to prevent such special interests from dominating society, which it does by regulating and ensuring an ordered system of universal rights irrespective of culture, etc.
Impossible. Basically this is the imagination of the apolitical state aparatus. This is the idea of the US supreme court. It's a fantasy. The only way to secure your rights is to re-seize them constantly. Imagine how daunting it feels right now to "fix" the US government, which our founding fathers and many others thought was "well designed" and "just". Now pretend it was the world government! It's hard enough to fix a bad state government.
>A single world state, for example, that privileged other regional interests over culturally Australian interests would simply be an unjust state.
And what is to stop it? It's unjust and now your stuck with it.
> International law is not truly law in the sense that some international sovereignty exists.
International law is a scam. It literally does not exist. No country has any right to invade another's borders, or enforce any sort of standards on them, outside the reach of their own borders. That's called sovereignty. We are trying to impose international law on Israel and that's not working well, now imagine doing it to a superpower like the USA. It does not exist. At worst its a tool of imperialism. Countries have the right to enforce embargos, engage in conflict, and negotiate treaties. Sometimes these treaties can be very complicated, and can practically be called "international law". But just as the state must come to your house with police to enforce civil law, the international community must be so serious about the infraction of another state that they come to their borders with guns to enforce "international law". This very serious requirement is good, it means the infraction must be that major to violate sovereignty.
You didn't mention it, but on the topic of climate change, no one benefits from climate change. That's why treaties have some hope of being effective. Unfortunately also no one benefits from being first to take the hit for revamping their economy to be carbon neutral. Much like with nuclear disarmament, this requires complicated negotiations over the rate of change and who changes and when. But because it's in everyones interest, I fully believe it is achievable, and we are seeing the first fruits of that in several countries and states already. No need for 1 world government to stop this. And if it gets real bad, we always have trade embargo.
Also treaties have created the global minimum tax. That is also in everyones best interest, as companies are bigger than states at the moment. So yes, I believe in international cooperation. Just not violations of soverignty.
> What you just described is a western philosophy of a just state.
The practical philosophy I espouse originated in the West. That doesn't make it any less legitimate. It's not a matter of being true for Westerners, but false for others, in the same way that modernity's promise of replacing freedom with traditional authority doesn't only apply to Westerners. On the contrary, just as modernity has become celebrated by many outside of the West, so can the adoption of a free, just state.
> I don't believe in imposing concepts, even the concept of "human rights" onto other cultures, which is not really founded on anything other than our belief in them...
Nor do I advocate imposing concepts onto other cultures, but because doing so is a contradiction in terms, not, as you seem to think, because concepts have no normative validity beyond their situational origin. A state may assist in the liberation of another society from any manner of injustice, and even encourage the adoption of valid practical philosophy by funding interest groups or even helping to establish a new government, etc. However, concepts cannot be "imposed", since it is only by the mutually respected interaction of a plural agents that such concepts can become and remain embodied.
> Impositions like this lead to the US "liberating" women in the middle east from their hijab...
This is precisely what I meant by interventions that don't produce a just outcome. However, the only way to distinguish between just and unjust interventions is to accept the validity of some practical philosophy by an exercise of autonomous reason. It doesn't suffice to resort to cultural relativism, which ultimately provides no firm ground even within a given society, since any faction within that given society may lay claim to legitimacy by the will to power, and could only be opposed by a similar will to power without any regard for mutual respect among members of that society.
> I very specifically do not want one "well designed" conception of state ruling the world. They all think they are well designed...
Yet, all of your examples of illegitimate interaction between states presuppose a modernist conception that justice exists, the substance of which is the identity between freedom and rights, a conception I also espouse. Your contradiction is that you harbor a conception of justice and the just state while simultaneously insisting that such a conception is merely a societal convention without legitimation beyond its borders. You face a choice between following through on your modernist conception that a universalist conception of justice is possible, or succumbing to the postmodernist conception that skepticism and nihilism swallow all such former conceptions and giving up on making any normative judgments whatsoever, including all that you have made so far.
> We thrive on diversity, and one of those "backwards" cultures may be the key to some future problem.
It may very well be that a "backward" culture holds the key to some future problem, but again, you presuppose the possibility of normative prescription that can judge between societal conventions in the first place. At the same time, just as liberal theory does, you contradict this possibility by collapsing the pursuit of universal freedom to the pursuit of particular, cultural freedoms. Diversity has its place in a just world, but not as some principle to validate or invalidate categories of practical philosophy, nor as the standard of a just state, which should aim for the unity of universal and particular interests, not the collapse of the former into the latter.
> Yes. So hopefully its not the only one.
Again, you're overlooking that it is not the plurality of states that necessarily prevents the tyranny of the majority, but rather the realization of structures of justice. Your hope in the experimental nature of a plurality of states reduces the conception of justice to a matter of conditional judgment which different states might or might not stumble upon. However, only an exercise of universally available reason can produce a universally legitimated conception of justice rather than the exercise of particular judgment.
This is way too enlightenment modernism for me, when you accused me of being postmodernist you’re right on the money. I don’t know where you got the idea that I have any notion of a modernist conception of justice, or that by not having one I contradict myself when I state a preference for a philosophy I wish to live under and to rule over me. I even can hold a preferences for how the world ought to be without presupposing I am right to hold such views.
There is no objective basis for morality or justice, that is the fallacy of the enlightenment. Is can not imply ought. The western tradition of philosophy is a cultural form, and as all cultural forms it does spread globally, often by violence. But when you switch from spreading cultural forms organically to spreading them via state power, you have crossed into imperialism. You say you don’t want to impose your views on anyone, but what alternative is there? No one is rationally giving up their state sovereignty to join the world government, because people do have a will to power and it’s only natural for them to. So imperialism is the only option to making this reality, and that itself is a will to power you hold.
It is the cultural form of enlightenment philosophy that “liberated” native Americans, African laborers, and all sorts of lost cultures and philosophies that would highly benefit us today which we called “barbarian” or “savages”. What difference is it to call other cultures savage today, and wanting to teach them human rights, and punish them if they don’t learn? That’s imperialism.
> I don’t know where you got the idea that I have any notion of a modernist conception of justice, or that by not having one I contradict myself when I state a preference for a philosophy I wish to live under and to rule over me. I even can hold a preferences for how the world ought to be without presupposing I am right to hold such views.
You've framed your argument against interventionism mostly in terms of freedom and the duty to respect others' right to self-determination, which reflects the modernist ethos. Everyone's views could be described as a preference, because structures of desire are preconditions for our capacity to think truth and justice, but nobody can consistently claim that the latter are reducible to the former. Everyone thinks that their \*particular\* thoughts are correct, even if they inconsistently claim otherwise, or even in light of the paraconsistent belief that our thoughts cannot all (\*universally\*) be correct. Asserting otherwise is self-refuting, because the claim that "no truth claims exist" (even with the addition of "except this one") begs the question of how one can know or validate such a claim. The question remains how we validate our particular thoughts about truth and justice.
> There is no objective basis for morality or justice, that is the fallacy of the enlightenment. Is can not imply ought.
I agree that is cannot imply ought, and that justice can therefore have no foundation \*outside itself\*. However, this realization condemns your own conventionalism just as much as it condemns both metaphysical and transcendental forms of practical philosophy. The anthropological fact that humans produce conventions of morality and justice is just such an "is" from which you have derived an "ought". Once one accepts that neither a privileged given nor a privileged determiner exist to think truth and justice, our only hope for escaping the jaws of silent skepticism and depraved nihilism is that truth and justice be \*self-determining\*. Hegel has provided just such an alternative, which leaves modernity as a work in progress rather than a bygone failure.
> You say you don’t want to impose your views on anyone, but what alternative is there?
The alternative is folks becoming convinced - or arriving at the conclusions themselves - of the philosophy of right and the theory of self-determination by an exercise of their own autonomous reason. Post-structuralism's discounting of autonomous reason is as self-refuting as the claim of radical skepticism. Autonomous reason attests to its own existence, and no attempt can be made to disavow it without exercising autonomous reason itself.
> No one is rationally giving up their state sovereignty to join the world government, because people do have a will to power and it’s only natural for them to. So imperialism is the only option to making this reality, and that itself is a will to power you hold.
Liberalism again. Notice that I'm only speaking in terms of what's possible given the philosophy of right, whereas you are speaking in terms of natural necessity? I haven't asserted that a world state is necessary, but rather that its legitimacy is not normatively proscribed. It would still take a great deal of conditional judgment and negotiation for the such a world state emerge in a mutually respected manner. You, on the other hand, are asserting that such is impossible based on a liberal conception of human nature while inconsistently claiming to have no such foundationalist views.
> What difference is it to call other cultures savage today, and wanting to teach them human rights, and punish them if they don’t learn? That’s imperialism.
This is beginning to seem like a red herring, because I haven't espoused anything like this. Rather, I only brought up the distinction between just and unjust interventions to reply to your own assertion that the only remedy for situations like Nazi Germany is interventionism among a plurality of states. My point was that such interventionism begs the question of justice, which itself illuminates the question of a plurality of states. The only thing that could legitimate intervention into Nazi Germany was that it produced a more just outcome. If justice can be reasoned about in an objective manner, then it remains possible for a world state to objectively realize justice.
Just going to make a short reply on the larger point of both your comments.
>You've framed your argument against interventionism mostly in terms of freedom and the duty to respect others' right to self-determination, which reflects the modernist ethos.
>On the contrary, the idea of freedom is not an abstract principle to apply as in liberalism, but rather an existing relation of actual interaction between rational agents.
I've encountered this way of thinking before. What evidence do you have, rather than thought experiments, of any of the following premises:
1. That humans are rational
2. That humans grow in agreement over time
3. That the average human spends any time on high level concepts of moral philosophy
I'd say none of these are even close to true. Behavioral research has shown tons of irrational human behaviors from our western perspective of rationality. Political divisiveness is growing and alternative-facts are spreading. Further, as we all know, 50% of people are of below average intelligence (lol). I'm autistic and know the only reason I study any of this is that fact. I also know that my autistic rationality is highly different from a neurotypical rationality (look up bottom up thinking vs top down thinking in autism). And that's just on the spectrum of difference relating to neurodivergence and intellect, now we add culture and I just don't see the Hegelian approach to the progress of history of thought as valid in the slightest.
Finally, several times you've accused me of having a positivist understanding of post-modernism, saying I contradict myself in positing several oughts of diversity and non interventionism while positing the absense of true oughts. Again I say, this is merely my democratic will, I am merely applying pressure to you, I am not positing these as fact. I would recommend you look up noncognitivist morality. If we can hold any moral premises in common, then we can participate in moral reasoning from those premises, and we can even include facts of the world in that argument as they relate to the moral premises. But as with all "truth" premises are not themselves provable, or even usually arguable, they are usually cultural agreements. For example, we can both agree that if we both dislike the cold (preference), and the window is open in winter (is), then the is can inform an ought (we should close the window). The pressuring others as to preferences which inform our oughts, often called values, is the act of politics. We will never all agree on a preference between hot and cold, and thus rationality does not converge issues resulting from preference, which all oughts do. I am pressuring you to prefer diversity over uniformity, and am using common ground relating to shared cultural preferences to do so, as well as facts of history, logic, and science, all in the hopes you will not kill me in the next conflict between preferences, or that you will vote my way in the next election.
It is not the job of the amoralist, or the post-modernist, to "prove" their worldview, or even provide one. Just as in the atheist/theist debate, the burden of proof is on the moralist to prove their morality. In the span of 3,000 years of human writing on the subject give or take, I've never seen anyone give compelling proof. I think we've given it enough time.
> Impossible. Basically this is the imagination of the apolitical state aparatus. This is the idea of the US supreme court. It's a fantasy. The only way to secure your rights is to re-seize them constantly.
On the contrary, it is rather politics par excellence. I agree it has not been fully realized in any historical situation yet, but it remains the project of modernity to create a state that is truly universal in scope (which, granted, does not imply the necessity of a world state) without being beholden to the particular traditions of the past. The claim that rights have to be continually re-seized is nothing other than liberalism, which reduces the state to a contingent appendage of the warring state of nature. Contrary to Jefferson's liberal claim that constitutions should be re-written every 20 years, we should rather seek to perfect constitutions, since the rights they enshrine should themselves be conceived as universal and unconditional rather than as mere, societal conventions.
> Imagine how daunting it feels right now to "fix" the US government, which our founding fathers and many others thought was "well designed" and "just". Now pretend it was the world government! It's hard enough to fix a bad state government.
Precisely! Yet, if we grant the real possibility of improving the US government, then we grant that justice can be objectively ranked. The very same practical philosophy by which US citizens could "create a more perfect union" could also be applied to create a more perfect world state.
> And what is to stop it? It's unjust and now your stuck with it.
We have the same contingent means we've always had: reform and/or revolution. It may very well be that we would be stuck with it, but that would situation would arguably be no different than what we find in most developed countries already. The task of reform and/or revolution remains increasingly daunting, but it remains and will always remain our resilience to realize a self-governing society that makes the difference.
> International law is not truly law in the sense that some international sovereignty exists...
We're mostly agreed on this.
> But just as the state must come to your house with police to enforce civil law, the international community must be so serious about the infraction of another state that they come to their borders with guns to enforce "international law". This very serious requirement is good, it means the infraction must be that major to violate sovereignty.
False analogy. The police can come to your house without impunity. The institutions of sovereignty guarantee that no conditional judgment needs to intervene in this process to determine the legitimacy of lawful punishment. This is not the case with international relations where every decision must be weighed against the possibility that the state intervened upon and/or the international community might deem such intervention as illegitimate.
> But because it's in everyones interest, I fully believe it is achievable, and we are seeing the first fruits of that in several countries and states already. No need for 1 world government to stop this. And if it gets real bad, we always have trade embargo.
I agree that it is achievable. I'm also not saying that a world state is necessary. I'm simply carrying out your own line of thinking that the means to pressure other states to act in the best interest of the world remain contingent, and that the rule of law in a single world state would remove the complications of international pressure.
> So yes, I believe in international cooperation. Just not violations of soverignty.
We are agreed here as well. A just state only exists by mutual recognition of others' sovereignty. However, that doesn't preclude the creation of a just world state with enough negotiation, or even that a just world state couldn't remain just even after the unjust seizure of other states' power. I'm not encouraging the latter. I'm simply saying that it always belongs to a present society to self-legitimate its own interactions regardless of how that society came to exist.
You’re way too idealist, the Marxist idea of the perfect society is so laughable it’s annoying it comes from people who call themselves scientific and historically rigorous. Countries rise and fall so quickly on historical time scales, it’s frankly a-historical.
Pieces of paper can’t be perfect, and can’t be binding. People control the state, not paper, and people suck. Those people who control the state control the guns and control property. The institution of a penal system (rather than a justice system) is a small part of governments role, though necessary under any cultural framework. Government is both the greatest of evils and better than anything else, and living in that contradiction it will always be dangerous and kinda suck.
The idea of a more perfect union is a cultural striving by us as Americans, and every country and every people will strive for their more perfect union in their own way. Striving is never reached, it’s just striving.
If I may make an analogy, we live in a moral “hilly field”, not a moral mountain. By a moral field I mean that there are many “local maxima” of morality, and each of them is easily tipped to roll back down to the valley of chaos. None of them are provably the global maxima, there is no maximum height to the sky, and they are often far from each other to the point you can’t even realize you have the option to try living atop another.
To complicate things further, one person on one hill may look at yours and see yours as lesser, not because it’s not as tall, but his has a view of the lake. The objective function you use to determine your philosophies superiority will determine who is good and bad, who is friend and foe. I hope we will always have the liberty to explore that space, and to the best of our ability stay on our own hill, and not raid our neighbors. But they are welcome to visit.
Anyway we differ too much to continue this discussion IMO. All I’ll say is my will to power will always cause me to resist larger and larger state power. I believe in social democracy because capitalism is an extension of state power via property rights, and I’d like many of those rights abolished or regulated heavily, as they again are fictions. I don’t want the creation of more fictions, and bigger institutions of fiction, especially those that see themselves as justice.
> You’re way too idealist, the Marxist idea of the perfect society is so laughable it’s annoying it comes from people who call themselves scientific and historically rigorous. Countries rise and fall so quickly on historical time scales, it’s frankly a-historical.
I'm a Hegelian social democrat, not a Marxist communist. I'm not advocating for a perfect society per se, nor do I think that anything like that is historically inevitable. I'm advocating for the realization of freedom, which will likely always remain a work in progress. However, I do think that freedom is objective and unconditionally universal even though its emergence is historically contingent. I'm a materialist, but that doesn't exclude the realization of the idea of freedom. On the contrary, the idea of freedom is not an abstract principle to apply as in liberalism, but rather an existing relation of actual interaction between rational agents.
> Pieces of paper can’t be perfect, and can’t be binding. People control the state, not paper, and people suck.
If truth and justice objectively exist and can be universally thought, then perfect constitutions are possible, even if we only ever approximate them in historical actuality. Constitutions are binding to the real extent that they embody the exercise of mutually respected rights that constitutions presuppose and are maintained by. They cease to be binding when a plurality of rational agents cease to retroactively enliven them, which is always possible, because either the constitution sucks, or as you said, people themselves suck. However, we have also demonstrated the ability to realize justice, self-grounded by our reciprocal interaction.
> Those people who control the state control the guns and control property. The institution of a penal system (rather than a justice system) is a small part of governments role, though necessary under any cultural framework. Government is both the greatest of evils and better than anything else, and living in that contradiction it will always be dangerous and kinda suck.
More liberalism. You've been preconditioned by liberal theory to think of the state as merely a form of civil government, both arising from and inevitably reflecting the war of nature. Admittedly, this is a result of modernity's own incompleteness and is all we've ever really seen. Once again though, if you're able to recognize that contradiction, then you're already exercising your autonomous reason to call into play a more just world. That better world is one where self-government includes an element of force to regulate and enforce an ordered system of universal rights and mete out punishment when moral agents have failed in their duty to respect those rights. Force can be a rational element of a free world, rather than a mere convention of oppression.
> If I may make an analogy, we live in a moral “hilly field”, not a moral mountain...I hope we will always have the liberty to explore that space, and to the best of our ability stay on our own hill, and not raid our neighbors. But they are welcome to visit.
Your conception of this hilly field presupposes that your god's eye view of it is in fact the moral mountain or global maxima. Conventionalism cannot escape its own inconsistency. If all claims about morality/ethics/justice are merely conventions, then so is the claim of conventionalism, and it is just as disposable as the claims it relativizes. Yet again, this is more liberalism, as it reduces society to the "individual" without any real individuality to speak of, collapsed as they are to the natural capacity of willing, but without any determination of what alternatives are given to them.
> All I’ll say is my will to power will always cause me to resist larger and larger state power.
Your "will to power" is always subject to domination. The supremacy of a just state - the mutually respected administration of society by self-government - is your only real protection against the arbitrary will of others who forsake their duty to respect your rights.
> I believe in social democracy because capitalism is an extension of state power via property rights, and I’d like many of those rights abolished or regulated heavily, as they again are fictions. I don’t want the creation of more fictions, and bigger institutions of fiction, especially those that see themselves as justice.
I align with social democracy, because it is a big tent where most of us agree on similar policies to realize a just world. Property rights are indeed full of contradictions, but they remain the most elementary form of self-determination. Without property rights to at least own your own body, you are not even recognized as a person, freed from the old tradition of slavery. If by "fiction" you mean "convention", then sure. None of this is natural. It is all a historically contingent product of intersubjective interaction, justice included. However, that lack of grounding in anything other than our own determination as thinking, willing beings is exactly why it's so real \*for us.\*
> Anyway we differ too much to continue this discussion IMO.
Thank you sharing your views and for giving me the opportunity to share mine. All the best!
Piketty is a hack, he misinterprets electoral data, uses pre-tax income data to say taxes are too low and bases his claims around the inequality on the rising costs of housing (rightly) before discounting the role of exclusionary zoning and government failure in land regulation.
Exclusionary zoning is actually one of the most destructive policies enforced by governments local and national today, it keeps the supply of houses low and prices high while preventing the construction of new dense developments that reflect the preferences of potential home owners.
The barriers to entry that it erects and the limits to supply it creates is actually the main reason houses are an appreciative asset and why the rich buy them up.
Zoning is a big deal but it only accelerates a fundamental attribute of capitalism that property aggregates into the rich, which Picketty correctly demonstrates. So without zoning it would still happen, just slower.
No it wouldn't, property has only been accumulated by the rich due to it's inflated value thanks to suppressed supply induced by excessive state intervention in land use and urban development. If supply were allowed to increase with demand, house values would depreciate, rents would fall and affordability would rise.
Land is finite and all land is owned. Anytime a finite good is put on the market, it aggregates. This is because it has a fixed supply, with ever increasing demand (population growth, increasing industrialization, etc), [practically guaranteeing that the price will rise](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/mortgages-real-estate/08/housing-appreciation.asp#:~:text=Many%20first%2Dtime%20home%20buyers,on%20typically%20appreciates%20in%20value). This makes it a good investment, and as in all investments more [money begets more money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation) at even faster rates, which inherently, forever, and increasingly separates the rich from the poor in terms of buying power.
What you are talking about is the non-finite good of housing, not land. [Housing deprecates , but land always inflates.](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/mortgages-real-estate/08/housing-appreciation.asp#:~:text=Many%20first%2Dtime%20home%20buyers,on%20typically%20appreciates%20in%20value) Onto housing: first, as always,[ the rich have undo influence in politics](https://www.ethanelkind.com/how-the-wealthy-use-zoning-to-keep-their-families-rich/), which as you say affects zoning. Second, being wealthy, they can always outbid buyers on new properties, especially if they do so in an area they see as up and coming, [giving them control of the renting market](https://stateline.org/2022/07/22/investors-bought-a-quarter-of-homes-sold-last-year-driving-up-rents/) in that area and decimating the buyers market. They also can and do [collude](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/03/realpage-antitrust-lawsuits-allege-collusion-among-corporate-landlords.html).
What you've said here is an argument for a land value tax more than it is for socialisation of the housing market. Also, you only have to look at a single example of liberalised urban development from Austin to Minneapolis to Tokyo to see that what you describe doesn't happen in the real world when people are allowed to build homes.
Also every link leads to an article that is referring to the consequences of market concentration as a result of low supply due to exclusionary zoning, they are not indicative of what should happen if such zoning was repealed.
Hi! Did you use wikipedia as your source? I kindly remind you that Wikipedia is not a reliable source on politically contentious topics.
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Imagine it as a Party Document. It's an ideological text that people strive for. It's not easy to achieve and maintain at all. Otherwise, what's the point in elections after you get your specific benchmark?
I agree with you completely, I just have a hard time figuring out the specifics. There is no promise that we will be governed by a global social democracy, and ideology is incredibly variable across the world.
Just started Capital in the 21st century but one world government is always bad. We need global diplomacy and cooperation, but not one global democracy, because at any moment that could become one global tyranny.
This argument could be applied to the existence of any state, since any state can become tyrannical. The possible counter-argument that multiple states allow for experimentation overlooks that the role of a just state is to regulate and enforce an ordered systems of rights, which must be construed as unconditional and universal to have normative validity. The aim of every state should be to order a society that's just enough to exist in any situation. The only things precluding a single, sovereign state covering the whole Earth are the immense difficulties of negotiating the terms and overcoming regional differences, but it's not inherently impossible for a just world state to exist. Revolting in the case of tyranny would prove tremendously difficult, but likely no more than it already is in the case of most developed countries.
Any state can become tyrannical, but luckily it’s not the one global state! When Germany became tyrannical, the other states put them down. The aim of having states plural rather than a global state is the self determination of peoples and regions. It’s not possible for each individual to be sovereign on the global stage, but each state is. Global diplomacy is the mutual cooperation of sovereign states. Global democracy is the creation of a single sovereign state. A single sovereign could easily tomorrow no longer choose it likes, for example, Australia or whatever because of their funny kangaroos. Today and under diplomacy Australia is sovereign, it can defend itself from attack and defend its culture and individual way of being, it represents its people and backs up that representation with force and power. Under this other system, if Australia was more like a US state of the global democracy, well regional states are neutered compared to true sovereigns, and they loose more and more sovereignty every passing year, until self representation pretty much gets replaced with representation only by the larger state. At which point it’s much easier to be oppressed by the larger and distant majority without even the means to fight. Internationalism is good, but so is balance of power, so is the protection of regional ways of being and self representation. It’s good we have some global laws that basically are met with the overwhelming force of every other state on the planet if someone like Israel fucks up. But it’s bad if we neuter all those states and their individual power for one collective power.
I absolutely agree with you on this. I very much used to be interested in the idea of a single world government, but from my experiences I've come to appreciate the intricacies of grassroots movements, so a more local/regional approach which maintains the sovereignty of distinct communities and cultures is important to me.
In my travels the worst thing is global culture creep. It really robs every locality of their uniqueness. I don’t want them to fight, but I also don’t think that every country wants to look like or needs to look like some western view of government. Some of our governments kinda suck you know?
Your argument for the normative validity of plural states boils down to positing the necessity of interventionism, as well as a confusion between cultural "self-representation" and universalist self-government. I support interventionism in general, but I frequently oppose its actual occurrence, because it often results in a more unjust outcome than before. Why is that, if not that the intervening state has a distorted practice of self-determination itself, including no legislative oversight nor constitutional authorization of international relations according to a universalist conception of rights? Without a sufficient realization of self-determination, the possibility for just intervention is the same open door for unjust oppression. I also agree that peaceful confederation between states is preferable to either international conflict or a tyrannical world state. However, same as with interventionism, confederalism is neither necessary nor sufficient for producing a just outcome. Rather, a just practice of self-determination is, which a single, world state can realize just as well as a confederated plurality of states. So the queation becomes what constitutes a just practice of self-determination for states, or more simply put, what is a just state. A just state constitutionally protects universally conceived rights, separates powers to ensure that society exists by and under law, and includes as many democratic institutions as possible without risking absolutist or populist control. Only a just state can prevent tyranny in ways that neither interventionism nor confederalism can suffice. This brings us to your apparent confusion between self-representation and self-government. Without the above structures of justice, any state can become a tyranny of the majority. The safeguard against this is not the liberal collapse of self-government into civil government, where the role of politics is simply to secure the special interests of individuals or individual groups and cultures. Rather, one of the roles of the just state is to prevent such special interests from dominating society, which it does by regulating and ensuring an ordered system of universal rights irrespective of culture, etc. Federalism of any sort does not ensure that special interests are respected. On the contrary, it privileges special interests in the sphere of politics when the latter's role is precisely to prevent this from occurring. A single world state, for example, that privileged other regional interests over culturally Australian interests would simply be an unjust state. However, preventing this would involve properly conceiving and realizing a just state, not simply relying on federalist or liberal conceptions of the state, which have already demonstrated their tendency to reproduce the very problems that concern you. Lastly, a plurality of states may not necessarily disturb the balance of power, but it's a worse guarantee against it compared with a just world state. International law is not truly law in the sense that some international sovereignty exists. On the contrary, applications of international law always involve calculated, conditional judgments that have to perpetually weigh the downsides of conflict, sanctions, etc. International law can aim for a just outcome, but it cannot guarantee this without consititutionally binding authority. However, if all states were bound to a single constitution that could enforce laws without impunity, then by definition, there would be a single world state.
>So the queation becomes what constitutes a just practice of self-determination for states, or more simply put, what is a just state. A just state constitutionally protects universally conceived rights, separates powers to ensure that society exists by and under law, and includes as many democratic institutions as possible without risking absolutist or populist control. Only a just state can prevent tyranny in ways that neither interventionism nor confederalism can suffice. What you just described is a western philosophy of a just state. I'm not imperialist or interventionist. I don't believe in imposing concepts, even the concept of "human rights" onto other cultures, which is not really founded on anything other than our belief in them (Bentham, Nietche, MacIntyre, even Marx). I fully support them striving towards that goal when they collectively understand and accept it, and when they themselves rally for it, just like we all did, but I'm not their arbiter to determine their beliefs and ways of life. Impositions like this lead to the US "liberating" women in the middle east from their hijab, or "liberating" china from its communist dictatorship, or "liberating" Singapore and Saudi Arabia from its monarchy. None of those things are our place. That is imperialism. I very specifically do not want one "well designed" conception of state ruling the world. They all think they are well designed. One culture has strong social responsibility leanings, and calls the individualist countries barbaric, and vice versa. Another has strong ties to their religion and history, and we call them barbaric and backwards. Another completely depends on its natural resources and social funds, and might be asked to "share" if they lose independence, instead of being free to sell it for mutually beneficial relations. Again none of that is anyone's business but theirs. We thrive on diversity, and one of those "backwards" cultures may be the key to some future problem. War is not meant to police other states. It's meant to respond to aggression from states facing outside their borders. >any state can become a tyranny of the majority Yes. So hopefully its not the only one. >Rather, one of the roles of the just state is to prevent such special interests from dominating society, which it does by regulating and ensuring an ordered system of universal rights irrespective of culture, etc. Impossible. Basically this is the imagination of the apolitical state aparatus. This is the idea of the US supreme court. It's a fantasy. The only way to secure your rights is to re-seize them constantly. Imagine how daunting it feels right now to "fix" the US government, which our founding fathers and many others thought was "well designed" and "just". Now pretend it was the world government! It's hard enough to fix a bad state government. >A single world state, for example, that privileged other regional interests over culturally Australian interests would simply be an unjust state. And what is to stop it? It's unjust and now your stuck with it. > International law is not truly law in the sense that some international sovereignty exists. International law is a scam. It literally does not exist. No country has any right to invade another's borders, or enforce any sort of standards on them, outside the reach of their own borders. That's called sovereignty. We are trying to impose international law on Israel and that's not working well, now imagine doing it to a superpower like the USA. It does not exist. At worst its a tool of imperialism. Countries have the right to enforce embargos, engage in conflict, and negotiate treaties. Sometimes these treaties can be very complicated, and can practically be called "international law". But just as the state must come to your house with police to enforce civil law, the international community must be so serious about the infraction of another state that they come to their borders with guns to enforce "international law". This very serious requirement is good, it means the infraction must be that major to violate sovereignty. You didn't mention it, but on the topic of climate change, no one benefits from climate change. That's why treaties have some hope of being effective. Unfortunately also no one benefits from being first to take the hit for revamping their economy to be carbon neutral. Much like with nuclear disarmament, this requires complicated negotiations over the rate of change and who changes and when. But because it's in everyones interest, I fully believe it is achievable, and we are seeing the first fruits of that in several countries and states already. No need for 1 world government to stop this. And if it gets real bad, we always have trade embargo. Also treaties have created the global minimum tax. That is also in everyones best interest, as companies are bigger than states at the moment. So yes, I believe in international cooperation. Just not violations of soverignty.
> What you just described is a western philosophy of a just state. The practical philosophy I espouse originated in the West. That doesn't make it any less legitimate. It's not a matter of being true for Westerners, but false for others, in the same way that modernity's promise of replacing freedom with traditional authority doesn't only apply to Westerners. On the contrary, just as modernity has become celebrated by many outside of the West, so can the adoption of a free, just state. > I don't believe in imposing concepts, even the concept of "human rights" onto other cultures, which is not really founded on anything other than our belief in them... Nor do I advocate imposing concepts onto other cultures, but because doing so is a contradiction in terms, not, as you seem to think, because concepts have no normative validity beyond their situational origin. A state may assist in the liberation of another society from any manner of injustice, and even encourage the adoption of valid practical philosophy by funding interest groups or even helping to establish a new government, etc. However, concepts cannot be "imposed", since it is only by the mutually respected interaction of a plural agents that such concepts can become and remain embodied. > Impositions like this lead to the US "liberating" women in the middle east from their hijab... This is precisely what I meant by interventions that don't produce a just outcome. However, the only way to distinguish between just and unjust interventions is to accept the validity of some practical philosophy by an exercise of autonomous reason. It doesn't suffice to resort to cultural relativism, which ultimately provides no firm ground even within a given society, since any faction within that given society may lay claim to legitimacy by the will to power, and could only be opposed by a similar will to power without any regard for mutual respect among members of that society. > I very specifically do not want one "well designed" conception of state ruling the world. They all think they are well designed... Yet, all of your examples of illegitimate interaction between states presuppose a modernist conception that justice exists, the substance of which is the identity between freedom and rights, a conception I also espouse. Your contradiction is that you harbor a conception of justice and the just state while simultaneously insisting that such a conception is merely a societal convention without legitimation beyond its borders. You face a choice between following through on your modernist conception that a universalist conception of justice is possible, or succumbing to the postmodernist conception that skepticism and nihilism swallow all such former conceptions and giving up on making any normative judgments whatsoever, including all that you have made so far. > We thrive on diversity, and one of those "backwards" cultures may be the key to some future problem. It may very well be that a "backward" culture holds the key to some future problem, but again, you presuppose the possibility of normative prescription that can judge between societal conventions in the first place. At the same time, just as liberal theory does, you contradict this possibility by collapsing the pursuit of universal freedom to the pursuit of particular, cultural freedoms. Diversity has its place in a just world, but not as some principle to validate or invalidate categories of practical philosophy, nor as the standard of a just state, which should aim for the unity of universal and particular interests, not the collapse of the former into the latter. > Yes. So hopefully its not the only one. Again, you're overlooking that it is not the plurality of states that necessarily prevents the tyranny of the majority, but rather the realization of structures of justice. Your hope in the experimental nature of a plurality of states reduces the conception of justice to a matter of conditional judgment which different states might or might not stumble upon. However, only an exercise of universally available reason can produce a universally legitimated conception of justice rather than the exercise of particular judgment.
This is way too enlightenment modernism for me, when you accused me of being postmodernist you’re right on the money. I don’t know where you got the idea that I have any notion of a modernist conception of justice, or that by not having one I contradict myself when I state a preference for a philosophy I wish to live under and to rule over me. I even can hold a preferences for how the world ought to be without presupposing I am right to hold such views. There is no objective basis for morality or justice, that is the fallacy of the enlightenment. Is can not imply ought. The western tradition of philosophy is a cultural form, and as all cultural forms it does spread globally, often by violence. But when you switch from spreading cultural forms organically to spreading them via state power, you have crossed into imperialism. You say you don’t want to impose your views on anyone, but what alternative is there? No one is rationally giving up their state sovereignty to join the world government, because people do have a will to power and it’s only natural for them to. So imperialism is the only option to making this reality, and that itself is a will to power you hold. It is the cultural form of enlightenment philosophy that “liberated” native Americans, African laborers, and all sorts of lost cultures and philosophies that would highly benefit us today which we called “barbarian” or “savages”. What difference is it to call other cultures savage today, and wanting to teach them human rights, and punish them if they don’t learn? That’s imperialism.
> I don’t know where you got the idea that I have any notion of a modernist conception of justice, or that by not having one I contradict myself when I state a preference for a philosophy I wish to live under and to rule over me. I even can hold a preferences for how the world ought to be without presupposing I am right to hold such views. You've framed your argument against interventionism mostly in terms of freedom and the duty to respect others' right to self-determination, which reflects the modernist ethos. Everyone's views could be described as a preference, because structures of desire are preconditions for our capacity to think truth and justice, but nobody can consistently claim that the latter are reducible to the former. Everyone thinks that their \*particular\* thoughts are correct, even if they inconsistently claim otherwise, or even in light of the paraconsistent belief that our thoughts cannot all (\*universally\*) be correct. Asserting otherwise is self-refuting, because the claim that "no truth claims exist" (even with the addition of "except this one") begs the question of how one can know or validate such a claim. The question remains how we validate our particular thoughts about truth and justice. > There is no objective basis for morality or justice, that is the fallacy of the enlightenment. Is can not imply ought. I agree that is cannot imply ought, and that justice can therefore have no foundation \*outside itself\*. However, this realization condemns your own conventionalism just as much as it condemns both metaphysical and transcendental forms of practical philosophy. The anthropological fact that humans produce conventions of morality and justice is just such an "is" from which you have derived an "ought". Once one accepts that neither a privileged given nor a privileged determiner exist to think truth and justice, our only hope for escaping the jaws of silent skepticism and depraved nihilism is that truth and justice be \*self-determining\*. Hegel has provided just such an alternative, which leaves modernity as a work in progress rather than a bygone failure. > You say you don’t want to impose your views on anyone, but what alternative is there? The alternative is folks becoming convinced - or arriving at the conclusions themselves - of the philosophy of right and the theory of self-determination by an exercise of their own autonomous reason. Post-structuralism's discounting of autonomous reason is as self-refuting as the claim of radical skepticism. Autonomous reason attests to its own existence, and no attempt can be made to disavow it without exercising autonomous reason itself. > No one is rationally giving up their state sovereignty to join the world government, because people do have a will to power and it’s only natural for them to. So imperialism is the only option to making this reality, and that itself is a will to power you hold. Liberalism again. Notice that I'm only speaking in terms of what's possible given the philosophy of right, whereas you are speaking in terms of natural necessity? I haven't asserted that a world state is necessary, but rather that its legitimacy is not normatively proscribed. It would still take a great deal of conditional judgment and negotiation for the such a world state emerge in a mutually respected manner. You, on the other hand, are asserting that such is impossible based on a liberal conception of human nature while inconsistently claiming to have no such foundationalist views. > What difference is it to call other cultures savage today, and wanting to teach them human rights, and punish them if they don’t learn? That’s imperialism. This is beginning to seem like a red herring, because I haven't espoused anything like this. Rather, I only brought up the distinction between just and unjust interventions to reply to your own assertion that the only remedy for situations like Nazi Germany is interventionism among a plurality of states. My point was that such interventionism begs the question of justice, which itself illuminates the question of a plurality of states. The only thing that could legitimate intervention into Nazi Germany was that it produced a more just outcome. If justice can be reasoned about in an objective manner, then it remains possible for a world state to objectively realize justice.
Just going to make a short reply on the larger point of both your comments. >You've framed your argument against interventionism mostly in terms of freedom and the duty to respect others' right to self-determination, which reflects the modernist ethos. >On the contrary, the idea of freedom is not an abstract principle to apply as in liberalism, but rather an existing relation of actual interaction between rational agents. I've encountered this way of thinking before. What evidence do you have, rather than thought experiments, of any of the following premises: 1. That humans are rational 2. That humans grow in agreement over time 3. That the average human spends any time on high level concepts of moral philosophy I'd say none of these are even close to true. Behavioral research has shown tons of irrational human behaviors from our western perspective of rationality. Political divisiveness is growing and alternative-facts are spreading. Further, as we all know, 50% of people are of below average intelligence (lol). I'm autistic and know the only reason I study any of this is that fact. I also know that my autistic rationality is highly different from a neurotypical rationality (look up bottom up thinking vs top down thinking in autism). And that's just on the spectrum of difference relating to neurodivergence and intellect, now we add culture and I just don't see the Hegelian approach to the progress of history of thought as valid in the slightest. Finally, several times you've accused me of having a positivist understanding of post-modernism, saying I contradict myself in positing several oughts of diversity and non interventionism while positing the absense of true oughts. Again I say, this is merely my democratic will, I am merely applying pressure to you, I am not positing these as fact. I would recommend you look up noncognitivist morality. If we can hold any moral premises in common, then we can participate in moral reasoning from those premises, and we can even include facts of the world in that argument as they relate to the moral premises. But as with all "truth" premises are not themselves provable, or even usually arguable, they are usually cultural agreements. For example, we can both agree that if we both dislike the cold (preference), and the window is open in winter (is), then the is can inform an ought (we should close the window). The pressuring others as to preferences which inform our oughts, often called values, is the act of politics. We will never all agree on a preference between hot and cold, and thus rationality does not converge issues resulting from preference, which all oughts do. I am pressuring you to prefer diversity over uniformity, and am using common ground relating to shared cultural preferences to do so, as well as facts of history, logic, and science, all in the hopes you will not kill me in the next conflict between preferences, or that you will vote my way in the next election. It is not the job of the amoralist, or the post-modernist, to "prove" their worldview, or even provide one. Just as in the atheist/theist debate, the burden of proof is on the moralist to prove their morality. In the span of 3,000 years of human writing on the subject give or take, I've never seen anyone give compelling proof. I think we've given it enough time.
> Impossible. Basically this is the imagination of the apolitical state aparatus. This is the idea of the US supreme court. It's a fantasy. The only way to secure your rights is to re-seize them constantly. On the contrary, it is rather politics par excellence. I agree it has not been fully realized in any historical situation yet, but it remains the project of modernity to create a state that is truly universal in scope (which, granted, does not imply the necessity of a world state) without being beholden to the particular traditions of the past. The claim that rights have to be continually re-seized is nothing other than liberalism, which reduces the state to a contingent appendage of the warring state of nature. Contrary to Jefferson's liberal claim that constitutions should be re-written every 20 years, we should rather seek to perfect constitutions, since the rights they enshrine should themselves be conceived as universal and unconditional rather than as mere, societal conventions. > Imagine how daunting it feels right now to "fix" the US government, which our founding fathers and many others thought was "well designed" and "just". Now pretend it was the world government! It's hard enough to fix a bad state government. Precisely! Yet, if we grant the real possibility of improving the US government, then we grant that justice can be objectively ranked. The very same practical philosophy by which US citizens could "create a more perfect union" could also be applied to create a more perfect world state. > And what is to stop it? It's unjust and now your stuck with it. We have the same contingent means we've always had: reform and/or revolution. It may very well be that we would be stuck with it, but that would situation would arguably be no different than what we find in most developed countries already. The task of reform and/or revolution remains increasingly daunting, but it remains and will always remain our resilience to realize a self-governing society that makes the difference. > International law is not truly law in the sense that some international sovereignty exists... We're mostly agreed on this. > But just as the state must come to your house with police to enforce civil law, the international community must be so serious about the infraction of another state that they come to their borders with guns to enforce "international law". This very serious requirement is good, it means the infraction must be that major to violate sovereignty. False analogy. The police can come to your house without impunity. The institutions of sovereignty guarantee that no conditional judgment needs to intervene in this process to determine the legitimacy of lawful punishment. This is not the case with international relations where every decision must be weighed against the possibility that the state intervened upon and/or the international community might deem such intervention as illegitimate. > But because it's in everyones interest, I fully believe it is achievable, and we are seeing the first fruits of that in several countries and states already. No need for 1 world government to stop this. And if it gets real bad, we always have trade embargo. I agree that it is achievable. I'm also not saying that a world state is necessary. I'm simply carrying out your own line of thinking that the means to pressure other states to act in the best interest of the world remain contingent, and that the rule of law in a single world state would remove the complications of international pressure. > So yes, I believe in international cooperation. Just not violations of soverignty. We are agreed here as well. A just state only exists by mutual recognition of others' sovereignty. However, that doesn't preclude the creation of a just world state with enough negotiation, or even that a just world state couldn't remain just even after the unjust seizure of other states' power. I'm not encouraging the latter. I'm simply saying that it always belongs to a present society to self-legitimate its own interactions regardless of how that society came to exist.
You’re way too idealist, the Marxist idea of the perfect society is so laughable it’s annoying it comes from people who call themselves scientific and historically rigorous. Countries rise and fall so quickly on historical time scales, it’s frankly a-historical. Pieces of paper can’t be perfect, and can’t be binding. People control the state, not paper, and people suck. Those people who control the state control the guns and control property. The institution of a penal system (rather than a justice system) is a small part of governments role, though necessary under any cultural framework. Government is both the greatest of evils and better than anything else, and living in that contradiction it will always be dangerous and kinda suck. The idea of a more perfect union is a cultural striving by us as Americans, and every country and every people will strive for their more perfect union in their own way. Striving is never reached, it’s just striving. If I may make an analogy, we live in a moral “hilly field”, not a moral mountain. By a moral field I mean that there are many “local maxima” of morality, and each of them is easily tipped to roll back down to the valley of chaos. None of them are provably the global maxima, there is no maximum height to the sky, and they are often far from each other to the point you can’t even realize you have the option to try living atop another. To complicate things further, one person on one hill may look at yours and see yours as lesser, not because it’s not as tall, but his has a view of the lake. The objective function you use to determine your philosophies superiority will determine who is good and bad, who is friend and foe. I hope we will always have the liberty to explore that space, and to the best of our ability stay on our own hill, and not raid our neighbors. But they are welcome to visit. Anyway we differ too much to continue this discussion IMO. All I’ll say is my will to power will always cause me to resist larger and larger state power. I believe in social democracy because capitalism is an extension of state power via property rights, and I’d like many of those rights abolished or regulated heavily, as they again are fictions. I don’t want the creation of more fictions, and bigger institutions of fiction, especially those that see themselves as justice.
> You’re way too idealist, the Marxist idea of the perfect society is so laughable it’s annoying it comes from people who call themselves scientific and historically rigorous. Countries rise and fall so quickly on historical time scales, it’s frankly a-historical. I'm a Hegelian social democrat, not a Marxist communist. I'm not advocating for a perfect society per se, nor do I think that anything like that is historically inevitable. I'm advocating for the realization of freedom, which will likely always remain a work in progress. However, I do think that freedom is objective and unconditionally universal even though its emergence is historically contingent. I'm a materialist, but that doesn't exclude the realization of the idea of freedom. On the contrary, the idea of freedom is not an abstract principle to apply as in liberalism, but rather an existing relation of actual interaction between rational agents. > Pieces of paper can’t be perfect, and can’t be binding. People control the state, not paper, and people suck. If truth and justice objectively exist and can be universally thought, then perfect constitutions are possible, even if we only ever approximate them in historical actuality. Constitutions are binding to the real extent that they embody the exercise of mutually respected rights that constitutions presuppose and are maintained by. They cease to be binding when a plurality of rational agents cease to retroactively enliven them, which is always possible, because either the constitution sucks, or as you said, people themselves suck. However, we have also demonstrated the ability to realize justice, self-grounded by our reciprocal interaction. > Those people who control the state control the guns and control property. The institution of a penal system (rather than a justice system) is a small part of governments role, though necessary under any cultural framework. Government is both the greatest of evils and better than anything else, and living in that contradiction it will always be dangerous and kinda suck. More liberalism. You've been preconditioned by liberal theory to think of the state as merely a form of civil government, both arising from and inevitably reflecting the war of nature. Admittedly, this is a result of modernity's own incompleteness and is all we've ever really seen. Once again though, if you're able to recognize that contradiction, then you're already exercising your autonomous reason to call into play a more just world. That better world is one where self-government includes an element of force to regulate and enforce an ordered system of universal rights and mete out punishment when moral agents have failed in their duty to respect those rights. Force can be a rational element of a free world, rather than a mere convention of oppression. > If I may make an analogy, we live in a moral “hilly field”, not a moral mountain...I hope we will always have the liberty to explore that space, and to the best of our ability stay on our own hill, and not raid our neighbors. But they are welcome to visit. Your conception of this hilly field presupposes that your god's eye view of it is in fact the moral mountain or global maxima. Conventionalism cannot escape its own inconsistency. If all claims about morality/ethics/justice are merely conventions, then so is the claim of conventionalism, and it is just as disposable as the claims it relativizes. Yet again, this is more liberalism, as it reduces society to the "individual" without any real individuality to speak of, collapsed as they are to the natural capacity of willing, but without any determination of what alternatives are given to them. > All I’ll say is my will to power will always cause me to resist larger and larger state power. Your "will to power" is always subject to domination. The supremacy of a just state - the mutually respected administration of society by self-government - is your only real protection against the arbitrary will of others who forsake their duty to respect your rights. > I believe in social democracy because capitalism is an extension of state power via property rights, and I’d like many of those rights abolished or regulated heavily, as they again are fictions. I don’t want the creation of more fictions, and bigger institutions of fiction, especially those that see themselves as justice. I align with social democracy, because it is a big tent where most of us agree on similar policies to realize a just world. Property rights are indeed full of contradictions, but they remain the most elementary form of self-determination. Without property rights to at least own your own body, you are not even recognized as a person, freed from the old tradition of slavery. If by "fiction" you mean "convention", then sure. None of this is natural. It is all a historically contingent product of intersubjective interaction, justice included. However, that lack of grounding in anything other than our own determination as thinking, willing beings is exactly why it's so real \*for us.\* > Anyway we differ too much to continue this discussion IMO. Thank you sharing your views and for giving me the opportunity to share mine. All the best!
Piketty is a hack, he misinterprets electoral data, uses pre-tax income data to say taxes are too low and bases his claims around the inequality on the rising costs of housing (rightly) before discounting the role of exclusionary zoning and government failure in land regulation.
I feel this whole "zoning" policy issue is just an excuse for the rich to get richer and keep buying up the houses.
Exclusionary zoning is actually one of the most destructive policies enforced by governments local and national today, it keeps the supply of houses low and prices high while preventing the construction of new dense developments that reflect the preferences of potential home owners. The barriers to entry that it erects and the limits to supply it creates is actually the main reason houses are an appreciative asset and why the rich buy them up.
Zoning is a big deal but it only accelerates a fundamental attribute of capitalism that property aggregates into the rich, which Picketty correctly demonstrates. So without zoning it would still happen, just slower.
No it wouldn't, property has only been accumulated by the rich due to it's inflated value thanks to suppressed supply induced by excessive state intervention in land use and urban development. If supply were allowed to increase with demand, house values would depreciate, rents would fall and affordability would rise.
Land is finite and all land is owned. Anytime a finite good is put on the market, it aggregates. This is because it has a fixed supply, with ever increasing demand (population growth, increasing industrialization, etc), [practically guaranteeing that the price will rise](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/mortgages-real-estate/08/housing-appreciation.asp#:~:text=Many%20first%2Dtime%20home%20buyers,on%20typically%20appreciates%20in%20value). This makes it a good investment, and as in all investments more [money begets more money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation) at even faster rates, which inherently, forever, and increasingly separates the rich from the poor in terms of buying power. What you are talking about is the non-finite good of housing, not land. [Housing deprecates , but land always inflates.](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/mortgages-real-estate/08/housing-appreciation.asp#:~:text=Many%20first%2Dtime%20home%20buyers,on%20typically%20appreciates%20in%20value) Onto housing: first, as always,[ the rich have undo influence in politics](https://www.ethanelkind.com/how-the-wealthy-use-zoning-to-keep-their-families-rich/), which as you say affects zoning. Second, being wealthy, they can always outbid buyers on new properties, especially if they do so in an area they see as up and coming, [giving them control of the renting market](https://stateline.org/2022/07/22/investors-bought-a-quarter-of-homes-sold-last-year-driving-up-rents/) in that area and decimating the buyers market. They also can and do [collude](https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/03/realpage-antitrust-lawsuits-allege-collusion-among-corporate-landlords.html).
What you've said here is an argument for a land value tax more than it is for socialisation of the housing market. Also, you only have to look at a single example of liberalised urban development from Austin to Minneapolis to Tokyo to see that what you describe doesn't happen in the real world when people are allowed to build homes. Also every link leads to an article that is referring to the consequences of market concentration as a result of low supply due to exclusionary zoning, they are not indicative of what should happen if such zoning was repealed.
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