In 8 minutes, learn how the philosophy of liberty is based on the hallmark of self-ownership.
In the USA, it seems barely a moment passes before you hear references to freedom and liberty. This could be talk about the right of free speech, gun control, property, or any other number of topics.
This is not surprising. The US was built upon the philosophy of liberty. But what does this philosophy even mean? Watch the short film below:
Seems a fair and pleasant way of living, doesn’t it? If we always look out for Number #1, everyone would be better off. Or would they?
Consider this philosophy for anyone who’s traveled to developing countries. The truth is that the world economies are vastly connected – cheap goods in one means cheap labour in another. It becomes soberingly clear that only looking out for ourselves means crippling the well-being of others.
Helen Lindsay agreees. In response to the film, she writes:
Libertarianism does not recognise the interrelatedness and interrelationships between all the people on this planet. It provides a haven for inherently selfish people – people with the ‘cheating’ gene. Unless humans recognise we have an inherent nature for materialism and greediness, which competes with our altruistic tendencies, we are doomed to compete and fight with each other forever.
What do you think of the ideas presented in the video? Is it the ideal system or fundamentally flawed?
About the Author
More By This Author
- The Secret To The Dalai Lama's Popularity (4 comments)
- Interview: Patrick Shen On The Power Of Death Anxiety (3 comments)
- Interview: Christoph Rehage On Wacky Beards And Taking The Longest Way (5 comments)
Related Posts
8 Comments... join the discussion!
-
-
@ Don “Cheating…is far more prevalent amongst those who tout altruism and manipulate others into suppressing their own interests in altruism’s alleged service.”
I definitely agree with you there. Coincidentally, I’m halfway through the phonebook that is Atlas Shrugged and finding myself similarly disgusted by the “looters” who cloak their theft in the guise of altruism.
That said, I still find your China example unconvincing. My point was that world economies are not separate – they are not left to their own devices to engage each other at will. There are serious disparities in developing countries caused by “Western” governments and international bodies (like the IMF and World Bank) that twist the rules in their favour.
http://www.oxfam.org/en/campaigns/trade/rigged_rules
And so, as Helen Lindsay said in her comment, it’s no longer possible to pretend that we’re separate self-contained entities. We need to consider a philosophy that encompasses our concern for the other, along with our own needs.
↵ -
You’re in a sinking boat. If I offer you a bucket to let you bail out, I’m giving you a chance to benefit “that otherwise does not exist at all.”
If I threaten to take away the bucket and let you continue to sink if you try to escape the ship or make your own bucket, “it becomes sobering clear that only looking out for ourselves means crippling the well-being of others.”
Using the terms from the video, the bailers may be able to earn more property, but they hardly own their lives. If bucket-providers only profit by maintaining disparity, how do you figure the bailers’ low wages would be in any way “temporary?” Under the simplistic terms of “bucket providers gotta eat,” what possible incentive would change this parasitic relationship?
The goal of force is to impose a relationship and its terms. Just because it’s passive and not violent doesn’t mean it isn’t force.
↵ -
I don’t see how a sinking boat fits the analogy. The Chinese workers are not in a sinking boat. They’re just very poor, and the bucket-providers are offering an option. It’s not a great option, but the workers can decide for themselves which is better. If the capitalists in Taiwan are able to impose and maintain a parasitic relationship on their workers in the PRC, then there is a power relationship at play quite outside simple business.
Japan, Korea, Singapore did not succeed in spite of us only looking out for our own interests, but because they were able to build up their own. China’s huge and so it will take longer. Haiti’s failure is not because of external selfishness either. To keep the point narrow: One entity looking out for its own interests does not always lead to crippling another, as was said above. It can, if the more powerful entity thinks its interests are served by suppressing another, and there is no shortage of examples among everything from socialist states to banks, but it does not necessarily follow; and that we benefit from low wages there or there or there (the economics always shifting) is not a bad thing. It is part of the process of building up the 3rd World.
↵ -
1) Ian didn’t say “looking out for your interests means crippling another’s,” he said “ONLY looking out…” That’s what I’m working with here.
2) I think you’ve got it a little backwards for China and Taiwan in terms of who’s in control. You really worked there? I’m a little stunned by this.
3) OK, scrap the boat – we’ll go less abstract. You’re in a sinking economy.
You work at a UniPro, a major insurance company. UniPro eliminates 15-minute breaks, violating worker rights. Do you A) shut up and take it, because there’s a line waiting for your job and a paycheck gives you more than unemployment, or B) complain, insisting that “workers can decide for themselves which is better?”
If you pick option B, remember to dial “1″ for English when you’re calling to claim your benefits. (This, by the way, was not a hypothetical. It happened. You could complain to human resources – if it existed in any worthwhile form. No union, either. Dissent was quickly replaced. I’m sure that’s an isolated case.)
But we’re not talking USA, we’re talking international. Surely Malasia’s labor protection wouldn’t allow that kind of shenanigans!
Would you like to see how the rising tide of American capitalism lifts other boats – sorry! – countries? http://www.organicconsumers.org/clothes/nike041505.cfm
4) Is the influx of Mexicans in the USA part of building up the 3rd World, too? Somehow that plan doesn’t seem to be going so well.
I don’t want to be rude, but you kinda frighten me, Don.
↵ -
Ian,
Big evil corporations bringing factories to Southeast Asia has done more to lift people out of poverty than foreign aid ever could. Libertarianism isn’t about selfishness; it’s essentially about minimizing government force. Plenty of libertarians are generous with their money. Liberals are generous with other people’s money.Government meddling in the financial industry (implicit guarantees of Fannie and Freddie, encouraging mortgage lenders to make risky loans, the Fed keeping interest rates artificially low, etc.) caused or at least greatly exacerbated the current financial shitstorm.
The Post Office loses billions every year. Many of our public schools are laughably bad. Our government decides we should fight stupid, wasteful wars. It imprisons people for smoking pot.
Let’s stop acting like the government is this benevolent force that wants what’s best for us. As the great HL Mencken said, “Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
↵ -
DHarbecke: Sorry to go back to the sinking boat analogy, but I wanted to point out an important flaw:
“If I threaten to take away the bucket and let you continue to sink if you try to escape the ship or make your own bucket,” — The only way to stop the person from making his own bucket would be through intellectual property laws.
Many American libertarians are philosophically opposed to the concept of intellectual property, some of them radically so. Even those who support the concept of IP (e.g., Ayn Rand) emphasized that it must be limited in scope.
While so-called “sweatshop labor” is not ideal, it provides jobs for many people who might otherwise have to resort to prostitution or other such means to make a living. Ultimately, the workers can decide for themselves what is best for them. In the process, the build-up of industry helps to modernize the area. This is a slow process, but the West had to go through the same thing at the turn of the 20th century. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
↵ -
I’m not sure I agree with the first line (”If we always look out for number 1, everyone would be better off”) as having any basis in the video – which from a philosophical point of view is very close to right on target – and seems more an interpretation based on someone reading Atlas Shrugged, which I see from the comments several people are currently doing.
The video, I feel, gets the philosophy of liberty correct: you are responsible for your own life, no one else can tell you what to do, etc. It does not touch upon altrusim or community, but neither are those involved with liberty; bringing those elements into society makes it Socialist. In true liberty, it is the individual’s freedom that is most important. In socialism, it is that of the society at large; in communism, it is the world community. In America, we chose (in 1776) to go with liberty. Russia in 1917 chose communism. Sweden and many of the northern European countries have decided on socialism, though note that it is not the Marxist form of socialism for which the word often gets confused.
The arguments brought into the film’s discussion are taking elements that are not addressed in the film, because they are irrelevant to the concept of liberty as a governing philosophy and thus not mentioned in the film. The philosophy of liberty (conceptually now, not the film) does not account for the global economy or what it means to buy cheap goods made in China because neither of those have anything to do with the issue itself, which is basically the concept that a free society is comprised of different people, all of whom are entitled to control of their own lives: that’s it.
Is this philosophy lacking, as Helen Lindsay suggests? Perhaps, but at the time of the Declaration of Independence, the issue was not globalization or corporate crime; the issue was, does the government (in this case that of the British royalty) have the right to tell people what to do with their daily lives? The Americans’ answer was No, it does not, and sought to create a society in which free men would determine their own path. This was a radically different approach than that of any other major powers in the late 18th century, and so popular that France in 1789 decided that they too should take that path.
Injecting arguments about “looking out for number one” and “people in developing nations” is more or less missing the point of the video, which was simply to outline – quite concisely, I think – the basic tenets that have to do with what Liberty means. After all, the word appears on the coinage of some of the world’s largest nations (unsurprisingly, China and Russia do not use the word on their coins, whereas the United States does, and France did before the adoption of the Euro), and as we debate civil liberties in America after the invention of the War of Terror, this is indeed an important subject in the West.
It may seem useful to question whether liberty is relevant in a global economy or whether it applies to emerging nations, but it misses the entire point of the video.
↵
