pull down to refresh
100 sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury OP 6 Mar \ parent \ on: The Archipelago econ
This, to me, is what is so interesting about this.
Everyone's head is a teeming hive of beliefs about the world that constitute an implicit (and sometimes explicit) Theory of Everything. I won't claim to know what the Platonic Libertarian believes, exactly, but the actual examples I meet in the flesh (including online) often exhibit exactly the ideological structures Scott describes: that the atomic unit of the human animal is the individual, and society is built up of aggregates of individuals, who attach voluntarily from their natural isolated state, and if we could only construct our laws and institutions up from that premise, a Utopia is sure to emerge.
Scott (and anthropologists, sociologists, and neuroscientists, among others) have gone on to refute the "individual primacy" belief set; and yet it is foundational in much political thought, as the essay demonstrates. This is not to say such a framework doesn't have its uses, but we ought to know where the system departs from reality, since, as you say, this worldview will be the lens through which everything is interpreted.
If you build your house on a swamp, look out.
I won't claim to know what the Platonic Libertarian believes, exactly
I think the core is: Human dignity, full agency, right to property, non-aggression
How you defend and narrate these into your political philosophy or day-to-day really differs from person to person, exactly like you said:
Everyone's head is a teeming hive of beliefs about the world that constitute an implicit (and sometimes explicit) Theory of Everything.
Which means that if we respect that this is the case and people can and will disagree with what we ourselves think is the Theory of Everything then it also proves that there is such a thing as the individual and that it may be the smallest denominator when we ignore time (most people tune their philosophies as we experience life.)
However, and I think that this is why I cannot agree with the author: this is not all there is. I haven't seen evidence that there are many libertarians out there that would deny the existence of synergy. It's just that if you respect people's agency, then participating in a synergic scenario is a choice too.
Example: Very early in my career I decided to no longer work for a boss directly because corporate politics were bothering me, a lot, and I felt this (and let's be honest, ceilings) were holding me back. Instead I took on the risk of being an independent contractor. I still worked with companies and also governments because they hired me; I was still part of a larger whole and I've been much more productive in that role than I was as an employee because I was not subjected to politics much. I've benefited from this and - per feedback - so did the larger societal structures I've contributed to.
Therefore I think that attacking all this through a strawman of absolute individualism is weak, because it isn't absolute for any real-life libertarian I know. It's just that in increasingly polarized debate and especially politics, people search for differences more than similarities. Personally, I think the polarization is a nasty signal that people have problems that remain unaddressed for a longer time.
If you build your house on a swamp, look out.
Absolutely! And "past returns are no guarantee of future performance" is no lie outside of the prospectus for some Blackrock fund either - it applies to the output of every soft science; from anthropologists to sociologists to economists to politicians; it's all narrative and it's all a swamp.
reply