Disqus - Latest Comments for sadielou

Re: If You Own It, You Can Sell It

sadielou — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:52:35 -0000

I've given this some thought, actually, and there might be a legitimate libertarian argument against legalizing prostitution. It's not, for example, legal to sell yourself into slavery. Why not? In principle it's not inconceivable that I could assign a cash value to my status as a free citizen. In general, if you own it, you can sell it, certainly. But when you get too close to questions of personhood there's uncertainty about who is doing the selling. If you truly could sell anything, what do we make of the idea of inalienable rights?

It's at least worth considering that a personal (non-commercial) sexual life may be a natural right.

Re: If You Own It, You Can Sell It

sadielou — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 18:26:55 -0000

Guilty as charged. I begged the question. Here's my best attempt to fix things up:

I do think there is a difference between prostitution and lettuce-picking, but I have to go on fuzzy psychological (or cultural) ground here, and say that having to sell sex as a service makes it far more difficult to have personal relationships that include sex. Maybe in a society with different norms this wouldn't be true, but here and now a prostitute has to forgo a (nearly) universal part of a complete human life. That's not true of other workers, even those who work for long hours and low pay.

Re: Wherein I Do Not Accept Crispin Sartwell’s Challenge

sadielou — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:50:31 -0000

How about this for a very modest, party-pooping rebuttal to Sartwell: there aren't morally legitimate ways to achieve anarchism from where we are now. We have a government; the public doesn't seem eager to vote for anarchism, and trying to remove the government through violence isn't justifiable.

Will's argument is interesting but I'm not sure that human flourishing and legitimacy are so independent. Consent is a big part of the legitimacy of an agreement; and in general people consent to what they believe to be good for them, what will increase their freedom or capacity to do what they want. If anarchy doesn't increase human flourishing, most people won't want it. If they don't want it, they won't consent to it, and I don't see how it can be legitimate to impose anarchy on the unwilling.

Re: http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/11/07/2143/

sadielou — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 11:57:14 -0000

"I've seen no evidence that inequality tends to produce more Democratic voters."

I don't have the link at the moment, but there was a New York Times article a while back that analyzed districts by income inequality and political affiliation. Districts with high income inequality (that is, within one district) tended to vote Democratic; districts that were homogeneous in income voted Republican. (The proximity thing is interesting. Do rich people care more about the plight of the poor if they live near them? Does living near rich people create envy and more desire for redistribution? Are homogeneous communities more traditional-minded?) If I remember correctly, Republican districts also tended to be middle-income, while the very rich and very poor were Democratic.

That doesn't in itself mean that higher inequality will produce more Democratic wins, though. The evidence was about relative differences and doesn't tell us what will happen if overall inequality increases.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

sadielou — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:16:21 -0000

You know, Iike Ezra Klein , I don't exactly understand the viciousness against her. Now, she's not educated about economics, she's not at all a rigorous thinker, her claims about free-market reforms are false, and you're right that her writing and speaking is more a collection of prejudices than ideas. It's a romance. But Kleinism is a romance and a prejudice that's not entirely foreign to me -- intense skepticism of organized power and the "big boys," whoever they may be. We need that. We need somebody who looks at an Obama rally and mistrusts the sight of thousands cheering; or who looks at advertising and worries about its effect on the mind; or who looks at politics and wonders who really holds influence. She "really, really, doesn't like being told what to do" -- even and especially in a capitalist democratic society, we need people like that.

I don't think she's really clear on what she's for, as opposed to against; even when she says that the economic crisis is a progressive moment, I don't think she knows what sort of regulation she wants, or is even comfortable with the much bigger regulatory apparatus that many leftish progressives want (and I don't.) She's a window-smasher, not a house-builder. Her business is disruption. But once you recognize what her function is, it's not such a bad thing -- we need a few Naomi Kleins who are ready to look at every single man in a suit and ask if he's secretly a thug or crook. It's a visceral response, and often it's silly, but it's a pretty important corrective in a society that usually swings in the other direction.

Re: Canada’s Leading Public Intellectual

sadielou — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:10:30 -0000

You're right, and I'm sorry. He's actually one of my intellectual and moral heroes too. For some reason, though (and I think you posted on this phenomenon earlier about a review of one of her books) like a lot of people I'm reluctant to make apples-and-oranges criticisms. It's interesting to say, "Smart commentator A is right in this case and smart commentator B is wrong." But Milton Friedman was a scholar, you're a political philosopher, and Naomi Klein is a polemicist who doesn't always tell the truth; there's too big a gap there to invite discussion. I feel more like patting her on the head than rebutting her points. But that may be a weakness on my part.