Anti-Climacus

LINK; Bill Wallo has a good response to my earlier post on the flaws of libertarianism. I should point out why it is that I thought the sudden inability of people to be good when they become public officials is an 'odd loophole': if you're positing, as a libertarian does, that people are by nature good (or at least benign), and you'd further posit something like the notion that no one makes a trade-off that's bad for them (definitionally*), it seems odd that anyone would ever consent to have any government in the first place (which everyone seems to do, though they may wish to retract that later in life) and that a person's nature changes the moment that their hat changes from 'private citizen' to 'government official'**. If you believe, as Bill believes (and I do too) "that people are naturally selfish, rather than well-meaning: I tend to believe that we must learn to love and respect others," then you can explain the reason for having government in the first place (to prevent against the egregious excesses men would subject each other to otherwise) and explain how it is only conditionally the case that power corrupts (that is, that if one is a governmental official and does not make any effort to combat their nature, then they will be corrupt***). Anyway, Bill's discussion is interesting... I encourage everyone to check it out.

*Except, of course, that they cannot possibly hold this belief, because it would force them to say that, among other things, it is perfectly fine for someone to sell themselves into slavery. The libertarian would try and patch things up by appealing to some kind of rule utilitarianism, but as with many other such instances, the whole thing is simpler if you're a deontolgist.

**If someone can be horribly evil and coercive, and the government does not hand out a little book to every new employee called Oppressing Citizens for Fun and Profit, it would seem to have to be the case that the capacity for evil resides (at least as a potentiality) in everyone. How can it also then be the case that people are ultimately good by nature?

***Interestingly, there's nothing in this conditional that wouldn't apply to any old person--anyone who fails to look after their moral growth properly opens themselves to the possibility of corruption... only the entailment differs.