This is why I wanted to avoid this discussion. Because philosophically, I really don't disagree with this statement, but the discussion has pivoted past the important part, where we talk about whether total economic freedom is itself ideology (or "an imposition of belief"). It doesn't exist in a vaccum. It is a way to maximize one particular aspect of freedom, but at the expense of other aspects. You will always have to make this trade off somewhere, paradox of tolerance and all, and I don't think this is the one we should make.
I'm curious how you would categorize total economic freedom in any sense an "imposition of belief". It is simply absence of any imposition into the economic realm. What other aspects are being sacrificed in order to maximise this aspect? I'm not sure the paradox of tolerance is a statement of fact.
But that economic system is built on barely 2 century old philosophy you take for granted. It is not "human nature". If you could argue for any political system to be "human nature" it would be feudalism or anarchism-without-adjectives.
What is being sacrificed? Equal starting conditions to start with. Wealth in capitalism tends to concentrate. Social mobility exists, but it is severely limited. Exploitation through holding capital is mandatory. I'm feeling this right now, I am in the top 25% income bracket overall and much better if accounting for age, yet I will never be able to do such trivial things regular workers could do just a few decades ago such as build a house, thanks to the freedom afforded to the absolute top end to turn housing into a speculative commodity. If I lived in the US, a considerably "freer" society than mine, my entire wealth would be consumed by healthcare, a result of the freedom of hospitals and insurers to charge arbitrarily high fees for maximum extraction.
I'm not arguing that it's "human nature". I'm arguing there's no such thing. I'm arguing that we are fundamentally decision-making agents.
> Equal starting conditions to start with
Equal conditions are not a prerequisite for liberty. They are in fact impossible to define and impossible to impose. You can be destitute and free, and you can be pampered and enslaved. The Darwinian nature of a free economic system isn't imposed, it's an emergent property of any system where scarce resources are competed for by living beings. As in any Darwinian system, the optimal behavior for the successful is to maximally exploit their success, to pull-up the ladder, so to speak.
Everything else you've said just betrays your religion: "Workers should be able to build houses". "Healthcare should be regulated so people can afford it". I don't think it's unreasonable to disagree here. In my religion, I'd prefer to die in agony rather than pry greedily into the pocket of an unwilling stranger. Why is your religion better than mine?
Which other freedoms are you referring to? How would they be reduced by total economic freedom? I don't see how economic freedom would lead directly to violence.
I agree that the maintenance of the common physical environment we live in should be regulated, but that's not what we're talking about here is it? We're talking about regulating interaction between people, which is inherently paternalistic.
- We already regulate interaction between people (e.g. you can't throw a rock at someone when you disagree with them). Even if it's paternalistic, surely you're not proposing we should do away with those regulations.
- The internet is a common shared environment, so its maintenance should be regulated like other environments to manage externalities.
These points seem consistent with your philosophy and also permit regulation of social media companies.
If it wasn't clear, I'm suggesting regulating nonviolent interaction is paternalistic, as is weaseling around it by expanding the definition of violence.
I agree we shouldn't let people physically destroy internet infrastructure. I don't think this is controversial. I don't think we should regulate how people peacefully interact.
Why is "violence" your boundary? Most people agree that lots of things can be "bad" besides violence. There's a pretty broad consensus on that. You're going to need some pretty strong arguments to justify legalizing theft and fraud.
I'm not trying to justify legalizing theft and fraud - these are most generally justified by property rights, which are somewhat tangential here. Neither of them set a precedent for the government intervening in honest interactions between people. Lots of things are widely considered "bad", that doesn't mean it wouldn't be tyrannical to make them illegal.
You didn't answer. Why do you draw the line there? What's so special about violence that it deserves special attention from the state, while other bad things don't? I see you've also added property rights now, which are a totally separate category from violence. Why these things in particular?
Because violence is horrific in a way that nothing else is. Poverty and illness are facts of nature, no living thing is immune. What's special about violence is that it's perpetrated by other people, people who have the cognitive capacity to understand the suffering they are directly causing.
Violence is fundamentally preventable because people have agency in ways that animals do not. You'll note that only violence with knowledge is considered horrific. For instance, being attacked by a person with the mind of a 4 year old isn't considered nearly as bad as being attacked by an otherwise normal adult. The adult knew what they were doing and did it anyways.
> I see you've also added property rights now, which are a totally separate category from violence
I suppose it stems from the idea of natural rights - ie. what would you be able to do if there were no other people around? Would you be able to put something down and expect to find it where you put it? If so then you have "property rights": the reasonable expectation that your material activities will not be interfered with. The rest of it is mediating how your property rights interact with those of others.
Liberty is basically the idea that you should be able to do anything at all as long as it doesn't interfere with the rights of others to do the same. The legitimacy of government is derived from its defence of liberty. It's not about preventing "bad things".
We’re talking about the concept of total economic freedom in general, which would inevitably lead to negative externalities of any kind, including to the physical environment, not merely interactions between people.
I'm not strictly in favour of total economic freedom and wasn't the one to bring it up. Namely I am in favour of regulating the physical commons - rights of way, air, water, etc. that we all must physically interact with. I'm against the paternalistic regulation of how free people should peacefully interact with each other, with the view to steer outcomes to some random idea of good.
What ensures the parties involved are free? Many of these issues being discussed deal with consequences experienced by one party that were never disclosed by the other. Information asymmetry makes such contracts un-free and thus the legal framework should permit nullification and redress.
To bring it back to the article at hand, did social media and other tech companies disclose the negative effects of the use of their products in their EULA?
The prohibition by the government of the use of physical force requisite to deprive people of their freedom.
If a distributor of an addiction-forming substance engenders an addiction in customers, is that not utilizing physical force to deprive them of their freedom? Especially if the addictive properties were not disclosed ahead of time.
What do you mean "negative"? Why do you consider captivating people negative? Do you think this view is universally held?
I think people should be able to distribute any substances or provide any services "as is", without implied warranties of any kind. Offering such goods and service does not constitute physical force.
Negative, in this context, can constitute enough for whatever grievance that enough users are unhappy with their customer experience. To take this discussion from the normative to the practical, I do not believe the appropriate government role here would be to act as sole regulator but rather aid those users who are aggrieved by these businesses in more precise actions, such as filing amicus briefs in class action suits by users who feel that their captivation has proven to be personally detrimental. Or perhaps for the FTC to provide guidance and support to consumer watchdog groups to form and issue PSAs on said detrimental effects. Empowering individuals and independent groups to come together. These supportive, assistive, incentive-based actions would not be utilizing the state’s monopoly on violence, and thus does not violate your views on the proper place of the government.
without implied warranties of any kind. Offering such goods and service does not constitute physical force.
Then there simply should be more powerful NGOs rooted in civil society that can advise consumers on potential negative effects, to protect against information asymmetry, and so users will understand the full freedoms they have at their disposal for redress if a business happens to provide poor, injurious service.
> These supportive, assistive, incentive-based actions
All of these actions are done with the threat of fines for noncompliance, and the threat of imprisonment for noncompliance with the fines. They are also financed by taxation, which is involuntary and redistributive by nature.
> Then there simply should be more powerful NGOs
If these NGOs do not occur naturally, then there's clearly not enough demand for them. This is supported by your proposal to use authority to force them into existence. I'm opposing the use of authority to intervene in peaceful interaction between citizens.
Instead of forcing the issue, why not just be content with the fact that most people are not interested in forming voluntary collectives, even when it is in their interest, and in spite of the fact that they are free and entitled to, and allow them to suffer the consequences?
> why not just be content with the fact that most people are not interested in forming voluntary collectives
Why are you insistent on claiming the nonexistence of information asymmetry?
> They are also financed by taxation, which is involuntary and redistributive by nature.
Ah if we go down that route of normative woolgathering then we can next call property theft and even land (or at least rent) theft, and continue this endless wheel of rhetorical Samsara.
