On the other hand, Derrida hated interviews, always insisting that his thought could not possibly be properly understood in a few sentences, and that it required a deep background in a host of philosophical traditions and authors. This doesn't sound like someone who expected to take on the role of public intellectual. — Joshs

Yes, I didn't make it clear in my post that he's still talking to an intellectual class, who then take ideas and make art or write articles and books or organize protests and movements (but higher education is free, so these people are much more mixed up in society). France has a public education system, and as I mentioned a pass time of debate, so there's a context where it's possible to impact the culture outside of television. The linking of television, punditry and intellectual, (i.e. marketing a simplified version of one's ideas rather expressing them) is exactly the framework I'd say we'd take more or less for granted in the English world if you want to impact the culture, but in France you can "write complicated philosophy" and enough people read it to have an impact. As I mention, it's still an intellectual class he's talking to, but one with more influence.

Also, he always said that he was much better received in the U.S. than in France. That is why he spent so much time lecturing in the U.S. — Joshs

But well received by who? The analytic philosophers? The establishment? Or cultural revolutionaries of one sort or another?

But even so, I think there was a similar "cultural conversation" happening in the US at that time, but largely confined to the liberal arts milieu; the silent majority was the majority as demonstrated several times (whereas in France this post war intellectual criticism resulted in May 68).

Aw for today, I'm not sure someone comparing Marxism in a Messianic framework would be so well received today, even at the universities.

Also, I didn't mean to imply that the educated French are big fans of Derrida, in my view his overall objective is to challenge people and not make a following; my point is just that there's a context in which his writing make a lot more sense, compared with when I tried reading him in English from an English monde-intellectual perspective.

The problem of translating an intentionally opaque thinker with thoughts "too complicated" for interviews is also a barrier.

This is not a defense of Derrida, just that he's not necessarily trying to debate solely with technically focused philosophers and win debates with them, and someone interested in philosophy in the English world is likely, at least it was my case, to view other technical philosophy enthusiasts as the only audience for philosophy and the only people who can appreciate "being thoroughly beaten" (likely he does not view those debates as winnable in any case, but the analytic philosophy malaise of "if you want to make money then you'll have these; if your a theist you'll want to argue this or that; if you care about nature then it can be defended; if you want to destroy the world you'll need these precepts" is where focus on analysis leads). After living on the continent for sometime, in my view as very focused not solely on ideas and analysis itself, but to an equal degree on how ideas are live in the cultural setting, how they change (how people change) and are trying to understand those living cultural ideas, to discuss and attempt to change them; in so doing, it's a much more "mystified" conversation, as we can't be exactly sure what those ideas are, what people actually believe, what new informations would convince them of what (of course now we have facebook and big data, so problem solved).

Stopping people from voting by threat/violence, or by already having removed their citizen rights, is not exactly what democracy is about. — I like sushi

The threat/violence and repression of the communists were done under constitutional powers granted by the Reichstag Fire Decree. It's debatable how many MPs voted for the Enabling Act simply because they "felt threatened", and again the electorate could have voted for representatives that would stand against the Nazi's regardless of threats (the communists were a minority and their repression was legal under the Fire Decree, people could have voted for more of them and/or more anti-Nazi social democrats; but they didn't and anti-Nazi's were in the minority).

There is nothing that says violent and manipulative people can't participate in democracy. It is you that is close but not cigar: you are including in your definition of democracy the assumption that it must be constituted by people who value the democratic process, peaceful deliberation and no dirty tricks. You are confusing democratic values with the democratic process itself.

Someone defending the philosophy of democracy must contend with the fact that the democratic process can be used by someone who values dictatorship to seize power through completely legal steps. Hitler is an example of this in practice.

The other parties could have opposed him, but didn't. It's a weak quibble to say they "felt threatened", the MP's that voted for the enabling act weren't forced at gun point to vote one way in a farce of democracy; there was debate, there was a deal cut with the leader of the other major party; there were nevertheless people who voted against it. The ambiance may have been "threatening" but any MP who felt strongly anti-Nazi certainly would have voted against despite the atmosphere; the fact is the majority were not strongly anti-Nazi and largely sympathetic to Nazism (hence why the leader of the other major party accepted a deal; support in exchange for a a position in the de facto dictatorship). If the repression of the communists was an unconstitutional outrage, the other parties could have opposed the repression and the Fire Decree (but they didn't because they didn't like the communists either).

Historians don't talk about the "Hitler coup" nor the "19 something revolution where Hitler overturned the government with a group of guerrilla fighters descending from the mountains".

Hitler was the government! And he exploited weaknesses in the design of German democracy to create a pathway to a legal dictatorship.

Now historians also agree that a majority of Germans were not in favour of Nazism, a lot thought he was a joke and wouldn't win a significant amount of seats and didn't bother to vote. But the point of this part of the discussion is not that Hitler's rise was unconstitutional or that Germany didn't have a democratic process, but to point out Hitler didn't truly "represent" the German people (in a meta-democracy way, just as we can say today Trump doesn't "represent" Americans, due to losing the popular vote, in the same meta-democracy way), as well as to provide a general lesson on the dangers of not-voting and the danger of parliamentary first-past-the-post systems and constitutional emergency powers.

If you review your argument carefully it reduces to Hitler having an unfair advantage in passing the Enabling Act, due to a prior accumulation of power under the entirely constitutional Fire Decree (granted by Hindenburg, who was president and had that emergency decree power in a democratic system; he could have decreed otherwise). In other words, your argument is that the democracy was badly designed, not that Hitler seized power in an undemocratic way.

Hitler did not stage a coup nor overthrow the government with a revolutionary force, he played the democracy game (as anyone can do in a democracy, regardless if they value democracy or not), and he accumulated enough support and power to be able to legally exclude his fiercest opponents and then used that position to solidify totalitarian power, again legally.

To be a proponent of democracy is to accept such people can participate in public life and form parties and run for office and be in government; but to have faith that good democratic design and enough people really valuing democracy itself can prevent such people rising to form a legal dictatorships, as well as update and adapt the system when needed.

However, there's no mechanism in democratic theory to guarantee legal dictatorship can't happen; it's a risk and a criticism of democracy that a proponent of democracy must deal with.

There is no debate? He didn’t get democratically elected. Saying “democracy gone wrong” insinuates he was democratically elected. Hopefully that misconception is firmly ironed out now so we can leave it alone. — I like sushi

Ok, then yes, we disagree on this point.

Though I don't view Hitler being elected as a point against democracy, it's simply the case that he used the political process to form a government and institute a dictatorship; there was no coup (if you see a third option between the two, please explain it).

From Wikipedia:

The Act passed by a vote of 441–84, with all parties except the Social Democrats voting in favour. The Enabling Act, along with the Reichstag Fire Decree, transformed Hitler's government into a de facto legal dictatorship.

The Reichstag Fire Decree was also constitutional, and as Wikipedia notes "the Nazis used the provisions of the Reichstag Fire Decree to arrest all 81 Communist deputies (in spite of their virulent campaign against the party, the Nazis had allowed the KPD to contest the election[167]) and prevent several Social Democrats from attending [the vote on the enabling act]".

Do you dispute Wikipedia's description? How is the de facto dictatorship not compatible with the democratic process the Germans had? How was it a coup? or then some third option that is neither legal nor a coup? (i.e. how do you argue against the legality of each step towards the Nazi's seizing power without saying "a poorly designed democratic system"). The Nazi's didn't have a majority, but it's a parliamentary system, Hitler got the other parties to vote for his Enabling act, and he used a completely constitutionally valid Decree to round up the communists. Sure, the fire wasn't lit by the communists, but that I would include in the "risks of democracy": that bad faith actors can use subterfuge for propaganda purposes; the Germans still voted enough Nazi's into power as well as other parties largely sympathetic to the Nazi's; i.e. the argument "it's only democracy if no one plays any tricks", I do not think is valid.

So you read the sentence "and it would go without saying that they'd be able to argue their view that the Nazi's were democracy gone wrong (and perhaps due to a poorly designed democratic system) and that is a risk but not definitive conclusive evidence that democracy is bad" as well as the rest of my comment, and you still believe I am putting forth that the Nazi's rise in Germany is a good argument against democracy?

Be that as it may, if we want to debate this, are you saying Hitler did not rise through a democratic process?

You’d have to provide some pretty convincing evidence to back up that claim! — I like sushi

Did you read the rest of my comment?

Look, I came from China. Marxism is shi-. — YuZhonglu

To add to ssu's comment, Hitler was voted for in a democracy, so were many other dictators (as well as many a coup that simply overthrew the democracy), yet few here would even attempt to argue that: Hitler was bad, Hitler came to power in a democracy, therefore democracy bad. If you step back for a moment, the reason that this argument form is used with respect to Marxism or socialism or communism, is that nearly 2 centuries of propaganda backs up what reduces to simply repeating that propaganda. So it's understandable that people who repeat it think of themselves as doing good, but is it critical thinking?

If someone was arguing for democracy against opponents here, it would go without saying that they'd be able to accept democracy does indeed allow tyrants to get voted in but that it is not necessarily a fatal flaw to the philosophy of democracy itself (they would then argue why not); and it would go without saying that they'd be able to argue their view that the Nazi's were democracy gone wrong (and perhaps due to a poorly designed democratic system) and that is a risk but not definitive conclusive evidence that democracy is bad.

Indeed, if we were arguing in Marx's time, a proponent of democracy would need to contend with the criticism that one major democratic experiment led straight to Nepolean and the subsequent wars that killed millions of people, and the other major democratic experiment was clearly just colonial elites not wanting to give up their slaves. Point being, at one point, whether the point referenced or then before, it was not clear that real democracies in practice didn't simply descend to a worse despotism (aristocrats argued this for literally thousands of years; and they worked pretty hard to make sure there wasn't any prosperous democracies around for most of that time).

Now, this doesn't establish things either way; perhaps democracy does lead invariably to despotism; perhaps Marxism in all it's forms does lead invariably to despotism. The point of a philosophy debate forum is to debate it, support one's arguments or then criticize another's arguments, then contending with rebuttals, subtleties and reformulations.

For instance, some Marxists view democracy as essential to Marxism, and therefore the despotism of the Soviet Union or Communist China (both emerging long after Marx is dead) is incompatible with what Marx believed and wrote. The main supporting evidence of this is Marx's view of the Commune of Paris.

All post-war French philosophers and intellectuals tend to sound ridiculous in English. However, after living in France for a few years I started to understand them better.

The key difference, I think, with philosophy in the English world is that there are much more sophisticated political and philosophical debates within French society, and continental societies in general, at dinner parties and over coffee as well as television and the Radio (it's a national pass-time). There is also not as strong a conformism of opinion, so you can easily get into a debate about "Marxism", or any topic, in casual conversation. Of course there's still an "intellectual class", but in general there are more topics up for debate and even more so within the intellectual class; and, importantly, there's a very radical part of the culture constantly both protesting and criticizing the government; the yellow vest protests are in no way out of no where. You can be driving along and two philosophers are introduced on the radio and they start debating contemporary events, in particular politics.

In short, continental intellectuals live much closer to the idea that concepts have consequences, not just due to the social discussions above but also being "in the thick of it" vis-a-vis the Nazis and then right next to the Soviet Union; not to mention the French Revolution and all the intellectualizing around that.

Whereas in the English world, it's usually a given that philosophical discussion is only really between academically trained philosophers, maybe the odd mathematician can join (but no one else!) and so discussion may as well be completely precise and laid out for highly technical criticism. If obvious truths are uncovered it is assumed that (in the US, England and other English speaking countries) that the political pundits will ignore those truths and stay to their scripts, and even moreso the general population; that to change opinions generally take some sort of marketing campaign, so in the English world if intellectuals come to this question then the political debate is how to make a marketing campaign to get people to believe at least a few points issuing from the actual debate, taking into account the unmovable cherished beliefs and a general lack of critical thinking; and it's a given that only a few would ever bother to read, much less understand, what the actual political and ethical points are in any profound way.

Whereas "on the continent" there's a natural defense against the intense propaganda in Western media, due to a language barrier where a lot of propaganda simply sounds dumb when translated.

As such, at least this is how my perspective changed after living in France, intellectuals like Derrida aren't trying really to win debates with other technical philosophers, but rather trying to have a direct cultural impact. So if we approach Derrida from an analytical perspective, it seems he just fails and therefore is irrelevant, but if we consider his goal is to say something directly to the culture, both trying to convey some important truth while provoking thought and inspiring action, then I think he starts to make more sense, and that he assumes a significant portion of the culture will read him and take those ideas into yet more conversations affecting yet more people.

Likewise, from this perspective, he is talking to French people, trying to stir them up, and uses a lot of French mannerisms and idiosyncrasies, and small ironies that sound fine in French; but when translated to English it's never clear what's what, so everything is up for mystification.

When a translated passage isn't clear, it's even more unclear because it's difficult to know what might be translator error or choice. Since it's "philosophy" the translator chose always the driest possible rendering.

So, I took the liberty of translating from scratch the paragraph as a little exercise to see what the translation choices are. In my version I try to render the more conversational tone that the original French has (it's still quite obtuse, but not as obtuse as the cited English translators version in obtuseness, given, of course we can't forget, only if it is obtuse at all to begin with; but, then again [and knowing what we have already discussed as well as the rest of the discussion] is not as obtuse as it may seem; so we must keep this in mind).

This transformation and this opening of Marxism conforms to what we were calling an instant ago the spirit of Marxism. If the analysis of this Marxist kind rests indispensable, therefore, it appears radically insufficient where the Marxist ontology, which is the foundation of the science or Marxist or the Marxist critique, also contains itself, must contain, and you really can't go without it regardless of modern or post-modern denigrating, a messianic eschatology. Paradoxically, at this title at least, and of course it necessarily is included in but cannot naively be counted as just another ideology or theology for which it calls for critique and demystification. In so saying, we cannot claim that this messianic eschatology that is common to both the religion it criticizes and to the Marxist critique must simply be deconstructed. If it is indeed common to both, excepting the content (and if we must deal with the fact that of course neither of them could accept it, this epokhe of the content, then we can proceed here with just what is essential to messianism in general, the thought of a better future to come), then it is also the formal structure of the promise that follows from them [overflows] or precedes them. Well, what rests also irreducible to all deconstruction, what also stays as indeconstructible as the possibility of deconstruction itself, is perhaps a certain experience of the emancipatory promise; perhaps even the formality of a structural messianism, a messianism without religion, a messiah, even, without messianism, an idea of justice - which we differentiate always with the idea of laws or even people's rights - and an idea of democracy - which we differentiate with how it's currently understood and it's particular characteristics today. (Allow me to refer here to “Force of Law” and The Other Heading) So here we are, and maybe we must now think, and think differently, to ask ourselves where it's going, that is to say where it is leading the Marxism which leads by interpreting it, and so cannot go anywhere without transformation, and not where it would lead us given where it has already been or where it could have gone.

Returning to the neo-evangelism of Fukuyama [...]

-- Posters translation of Spectre de Marx, P 101-102.

By the way, Zizek is totally wrong about ecological change. Oh yes, it's happening, but his disaster scenarios are utter rubbish. — YuZhonglu

Scenarios in the debate, or that he elaborates in other places? In either case, what's utter rubbish about them?

There were plenty of points where Zizek could really have hammered down on Peterson; just look at Zizek's bitch face when Peterson's floundering for examples of 'Post-Modern Neomarxists' or when Zizek corrects him on Foucault (Foucault wasn't a Marxist, he was a major critic of Marxism). But he didn't, why? — fdrake

Yes, the whole debate was a long discovery of the fact that Perterson has just taken for granted the US right-wing meme term "neo-marxist" to refer to identity politics, but there are no actual examples of neo-marxists and Peterson suddenly realized that it's a problem for a critical thinker.

Zizek let it slide because Peterson was so impressed by basic Hegelian / Marxist analysis of our situation as well as Zizek's "seductive charisma, especially to a younger audience" that he wanted to found a "Zizekism" right then and there.

Perterson lost the debate of defending capitalism when he recognized that the destruction of the oceans was a problem: to paraphrase "There's been some good things too for the environment, like more trees in Europe -- ok, yes, there's a total catastrophe in the oceans -- but good things have happened too". Zizek did come back to this point a few times, but there was never any answer, just a long ramblings about personal responsibility to get eventually to the basic point of "take the plank out of your own eye before trying to take the sliver out of the eye of your brothers" but in a new hip psychobabble version. Discussing the oceans would have been the "Marxist v Capitalism" point of contention, and choosing to avoid that issue and instead praise Zizek was why there was no debate.

In short, just two Marxists agreeing that the commodification of everything is a major problem.

Banning plastic straws is a good step, also, as you mentioned, plastic packaging in general but due to this individual moral culpability produced by the "environmental" movement, nobody is willing to demand that, nobody sees these bigger economic incentives at play....Yesterday was Earth Day in my country, yet all my friends on Instagram's big contribution was to repost those "one like = one tree" campaign posts that companies do for fundraising and free advertising...or shared this rapper that produced some song about the earth...0 understanding of the bigger picture, and 0 initiative to protest or make any real sort of change. — Grre

Yes, the corporate friendly media will only allow corporate friendly environmentalism.

However, when I was in the 16 to 18 range and becoming aware of these issues, at the time it was even worse, denialism and false-equivalence was at full power. Even people who accepted the science basics mostly dismissed the consequences as being "hundreds of years away".

So the current pop-environmentalism is still a big step up from where it was.

However, between 18 and 20 I felt I was literally going insane. Once the moral weight of what is happening really settles in and the truly horrifying scale (just the other day, experts announced the great barrier reef in significant risk to essentially die completely -- again, a decade ago is was "the great barrier reef is too big and too old, it could never die ... and if it did start to have problems, well it would obviously be a big wake up call and we'd certainly do something then!!) along with the realization that the truth has been easily available for decades (the basics of green house caused climate change was worked out over a hundred years ago, along with consequences of topsoil erosion and primary forest loss understood well before that) and so little has been done.

However, it's not the case that nothing has been done; maybe it's too little too late, but maybe we get lucky and we have more time than currently seems likely or there is some massive awareness shift that happens suddenly. My point here, is just that between 18 and 20, trying to address myself to the people around me was mostly just banging my head against the wall; at 20 I realized plenty of really clever and charismatic people with credibility, resources and platforms have been making the arguments for generations, and so it's a fools errand to approach things this way of trying to convince people who don't really want to listen or will never reconsider consumerist and careerist values and plans in any case.

The alternative, is to go meet the few people who are equally concerned, make or join projects that are doing a part of those small things that do really contribute and are thought out in a theory that is not naive and takes into account all the cultural and technical obstacles. Where motivated people get hung up I find, is that they place all sorts of preconditions of what "true environmentalism is", preconditions that are either simply not realistic or then incompatible with their character and capabilities. However, I think contributions can be made from pretty much any type of career or activity; what matters, in my view, is a good enough theoretical understanding to not get co-opted or unintentionally contribute to counter-productive things. In otherwords, there's a way to raise awareness and get debates going that are authentic and not theater (probably not on television, but there are other ways), likewise there are legal actions that can at least slow environmental destruction, there is doing projects that demonstrate or push further ecological best practices that then contribute to forming the basis of pushing for policy (both by showing it's feasible and helping to quantify the implications), there is academic research that (though there is more than enough to justify all sorts of effective policies) further proves things, and there is getting directly into politics.

Though we're far from any sort of victory, there have not only been failures in the environment movement. One success I consider a model is organic food. When it started by solitary and small groups of farming radicals that rejected chemical based, soil depleting and seed controlled agriculture, agro-corporations tried to just straight up ban it (one famous case in France the corporations just directly argued that organic farming "undermined industrial farming" with all sorts of fanciful arguments of why this was terrible for society); there was a lengthy battle at each step, for the right to farm without chemicals to begin with (was it even safe for the consumer!?), around the right to re-use seeds, around the right to advertise that it's organic and have labels etc., and each step awareness campaigns, legal actions, as well as developing organic farming practices itself was needed. The organic industry that is normal to have around today was a lengthy multi-decade struggle. Why it's a big success is that it has developed actual techniques and preserved seed varieties that we may soon be in a position to simply have no other choice but to use (so if those methods weren't developed we'd just be screwed), and second it's demolished the industry argument through all those decades that there's "simply no other choice" (people will still equivocate and argue there's higher yields, but even a decade ago it would be common to be accused of wanting to basically kill everyone with starvation for promoting organic agriculture -- I got this all the time when organic produce became widely available and I made a point of being as close to 100% organic as I can be), and, third, in developing countries having the organic option has even higher impact as farmers are even more vulnerable to seed monopolies, more vulnerable to chemicals as they don't have proper equipment, and soil in the tropics is much more fragile so techniques that kind-of-work with heavy dirt (ground up by the glaciers) can have massive soil erosion in very the very thin dirt tropics and pests can be much worse in the tropics because there's no frost and insect reset (so diversified farming keeping a predator/prey balance is even more effective).

So, a lot of organic consumerism can be theater, and a lot of industrial organic agriculture can be of questionable sustainability (not to mention the transport), but it's really of critical importance that it exists, and without the radicals who started a half century ago it could still be the accepted fact that industrial agriculture is the only option; that would be in a terrible position to be in. Of course, there's way more political work to do to make agriculture sustainable, but if we didn't even have any working examples the political obstacles would be impossible.

What I'm trying to stress here is that every kind of skill and character strengths were needed to make organic agriculture a thing (and eating is not fundamentally a consumerist activity, we do need to eat and sustainable agriculture will be the only choice available at some point, that is the definition of sustainability, so the sooner we deploy it the better and to deploy it at scale requires the methods to be worked out, proven and sufficient people knowledgeable of them).

Why don't we do this? Are you ready with a program which will convince people to do this, in the face of probably vicious resistance by police, corporations, the military...? Honestly, I think this is what we should be doing -- I personally don't know how to get people out to do these kinds of things. — Bitter Crank

I thought about it for several years and turned things in every which way I could, but decided it's basically impossible ... for now ... in the West. Most deep environmental thinkers, however, only stop at the first part and don't realize it's only true for now and in the West.

And why should we expect any different? The West benefits and is now entirely dependent on the global system as it is, why would the people that benefit be highly motivated to change it? And by benefit I am including the mostly exploited wage earner that nevertheless still has the privilege of driving a car, playing top-end video games, going the the cinema, eating meat at most meals, having every electric appliance one may need, etc.

However, there's lot's of people who don't currently benefit from the global system, and after thinking more I realized that it's here that a large difference can be made currently. The problem the West faces with respect to renewable energy is that the infrastructure is already built and has a large stock of fossil burning capex to amortize (and so a huge resistance by the corporations owning those sunk costs to keep them valuable) and the rest of society is optimized for these sources (using renewables changes the efficiency calculation of a lot of other infrastructure, such as trains being vastly more efficient than trucks and cars to power with renewables); and with respect to agriculture the main problem is only 2 percent of people work in agriculture and so "eating local" doesn't actually mean local but rather what's trucked in from dozens of miles; on top of this, a system that produces all the food with 2 percent of people requires full mechanization that again is an optimum built around oil.

However all the above problems don't exist in poor places that have no infrastructure and where most people are subsistence farming. In such places renewable technologies and decentralized technologies can be deployed with basically instant benefit and combined with sustainable agriculture methods (which may or may not be close the case in these regions), economic development becomes sustainable. This technological system is much more resilient, mainly due to decentralization, than fossil fuel supply lines and large electric grids. If such a system gets "good enough" it simply provides a far better quality of life than what trying to plugin to the Western system (i.e. move to a slum and try to move up) provides. Right now, both systems are both in competition (a government may have some sustainable policies available ... but opt to just kick everyone off the land and turn it over to agribusiness) and also this new system depends heavily on the Western system (to get capital goods such as the renewable technologies in question).

However, with time, this new sustainable technological system can become more robust and start producing more goods required to sustain itself; it can decouple from the Western system.

At the same time, climate change and other environmental disasters and mineral depletion as well as the usual problems internal to capitalism combine to start to destabilize the global resource extraction and production as well as financial system. So this brings us to the "for now" qualifier.

The consequence of not being sustainable is that things can simply not last as they are. At some point the Western system simply becomes untenable and regions start to drop out for one reason or another (a la Greece). As regions drop out of the Western system, expectations are realigned, and suddenly a much better technological system that's sustainable and local becomes very attractive. If it's developed enough, it can spread to previously-rich regions.

When I came to these conclusions was over 15 years ago, so it seemed fairly abstract at the time, but I would say today it's at the stage where these dynamics start to be visible (consequences like forest fires and hurricanes ).

Well, that "great leap" indeed caused a famine that killed officially 15 million, and perhaps twice the number, yet I said that after the last deathrattles of Maoism Communist China was still had to avoid famine in the 1970's. — ssu

Agreed. I just wanted it to be clear, to anyone unfamiliar, that large famines did occur.

Deng Xiaoping's famous argument, "It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white; as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat." explains quite well the Chinese Communists approach to Capitalism. Of course communists living in the West don't at all see it in the same way. — ssu

The problem I was alluding to was not that engaging in global capitalism has not been good for Chinese Deng Xiaoping and other elites, but rather that, for Western neoliberal or neoconservative commentators, that using it as an example of capitalism working must deal with the very large state interventions in every sector as well as the uncomfortable efficiency of capitalism (according to neoliberal/conservative metrics) under a completely totalitarian state; for instance, I remember, I believe Bloomberg article, a while discussing how it's a close race this century to see if capitalism runs better under despotic regimes than democratic and investors are reevaluating the assumption of last century that capitalism needed democracy. For the bloomberg context there's nothing else to say, but these issues I think are serious problem for someone, for instance in a philosophy context, using China as an example of how capitalism is "good".

Yet here's the problem: look at what they really embrace for their 'more responsible' and 'just' economic growth. Usually they aren't at all inspired if a country embraces liberalism and capitalism and starts working up the steps in the globalized market. No, usually the most ardent critical commentators see the as the 'positive' approach Venezuela of Hugo Chávez (before the problems were evident) or other socialist countries. I even remember this praise about Eritrea, which is a really odd dictatorship. — ssu

I'd invite you to view this as possibly a strawman projection; this is not in my experience what the "ardent critical commentators", at least the informed one's, argue; though please point me to sources that make these claims if I have simply missed this literature.

In terms of Chavez, the main issue is with American imperialism in South America and opposition to that. So, in this framework, Chavez was good vis-a-vis showing US interests could be opposed, but I don't think many informed commentators believed Chavez's plans were guaranteed to work. There's the strong impact of the price of oil on Venezuelan state finances as well as US actions (intelligence or economic) that could easily frustrate Chavez's policies.

There was of course defense of Venezuelan's right to self determination and to vote for a "socialist" and right to be left alone in implementing those policies, vis-a-vis fairly open talk in US neoconservative circles that it's time for a coup and assassination of Chavez. People in the West defending Chavez, while he was alive, was mostly with respect to US hawks calls to kill him, and then of course immediately being branded by such hawks as communist sympathizers. Likewise, anyone with an interest in South American politics is keenly aware revolutions for democracy and social progress can easily turn to despotism, either in reaction to US policy or because of the personalities involved. Whether it's a "step in the right direction" when things go wrong is always debatable.

However, I am very doubtful any ardent commentator was pointing to Venezuela as the example of "social democracy done right" and a soon-to-be great model to follow, but rather as examples of national mineral resource revenue distributed to the poor as obviously better than simply being pocketed by elites and foreign companies (without implying it's a long term economic strategy); Chavez was extremely popular for a reason.

In any-case, I agree with the comment that "they aren't at all inspired if a country embraces liberalism and capitalism and starts working up the steps in the globalized market". In an ecological framework, if the global economic system isn't sustainable, becoming more dependent on that system and destroying wholesale natural resources isn't a good thing. For instance, increasing GDP by cutting down the Amazon for cattle and corn, or killing a river with a damn, or unregulated highly polluting mining, is not a real benefit to anyone. Furthermore, the single biggest contributor to sustained economic growth in impoverished places is education; this is a pretty strong consensus in the development aid sector and it is not supplied by embracing Western capitalism. Of course, embracing democracy, education, valuing the environment (and policies can follow from these things that create sustainable economic Growth) can seem like embracing Western values, and some extent it is, but I would not say it's embracing liberalism and capitalism as it is really practiced (privatization, no environmental regulations for poor countries, no nationalization of resources, lot's of corruption); an example of a the "third way" model would be Costa Rica.

The flip side of that is that it controls the way High IQs are treated, as freaks and social losers. Submitting to this by becoming a nerd is self-destructive; it is an insult to intelligence. Straight-A students must become Alpha Males; only then will they stand up to the King Apes and tame them. They must get at least 50% of the value of corporate patents. With the wealth they created and deserve, they will soon drive out the investors whom we are so foolishly dependent on today. — TheSageOfMainStreet

How do you suggest the High IQs get this 50% value? The low IQ's should just vote in laws to hand it to them?

Though I understand your frustrations with the patent system, perhaps consider it is a symptom and not a small defect that can be fixed as you describe.

Also, the people running the corporations didn't muscle their way to the top, they are generally among the High IQs you wish to benefit.

When people with straight-A's are ostracized it's, in my experience, because of either intense family pressure to perform academically, to the exclusion of other things conducive to socialization (in the context of values that are not conducive to socialization to begin with); and/or simply the time commitment required excludes socialization; and/or a competitive drive so strong with one's peers that it is self-ostracizing mixed with a submission to authority and obsession with institutional value signaling that is also self-ostracizing (to most high-school students, who are generally in some level of confrontation or rebellion, either because they see there is something wrong with the whole system or because they are building and asserting their identity which is likely to nor fully aline with family or institutional expectations); and/or a sense of superiority and entitlement beliefs (for instance, that people who work for corporations for an agreed wage and agreed contractual terms simply deserve 50% of the patent profits, without any consideration of whether other parts of the system upon which patent-value depends are fair for inferior Low IQs or less privileged people) that are again self-ostracizing.

However, if the person in question is really that smart, then in graduate level education they will finally be among peers they can respect and who have equal reverence for intellectual performances and institutional value signalling.

Boethius is right about ecological theater. It's similar to the theater of safety performed at airports. Just because recycling one's cans and bottles isn't in itself going to save the world doesn't mean we should stop recycling. We can, we should, we must recycle. — Bitter Crank

Yes, we're in agreement ... sort of.

The theater part is the debate framework of individual initiative and "eco consumerism" being the available actions to make (rather than political organization), and then in a next step ecological programs that are largely beside the point framed as "better than nothing and all that can be done".

In some cases the ecological programs are both beside the point and even counter productive, such as biofuels destroying much more ecosystems than the 5-10% of oil without even including that ethanol is corrosive to motors (though destroying old motors to be replaced with more efficient ones is positive to a point, though of course can be accomplished with regulation in any case).

In the case of recycling, most packaging and plastic is simply unnecessary and could be simply regulated away without much impact on business (other than plastic and packaging suppliers) and what packaging is needed could be largely biodegradable. Not to mention planned obsolescence.

Of course, at each step the "better than nothing" is still a good choice; at face value it's good to recycle if that's available.

The consequences of the theater part, however, are, I believe, very serious and completely intentional. First, for people concerned it provides a palliative action that fulfills a sense of moral responsibility: "don't bother me about the amazon, I recycle!". Second, by theatracizing ecological concern in consumer choices, it drives a wedge between the poor and the wealthy in the environmental debate: a poor person may simply have no practical ecological options on essentially anything and thus feel excluded from the movement.

Most well informed environmentalist will be completely aware of these issues, but I feel are not aware that actively fighting this "pop-culture-environmentalism-theater", that's allowed to be discussed in the mainstream, is critical. By joining in the shouts of "recycle! electric cars! ride a bike!", or even just mild encouragement (i.e. participating in the theater), environmentalists help to cutoff the debate, and when people see that obviously it's insufficient to the actual problems that are mentioned from time to time, the end result is disappointment in realizing actions and enthusiasm were essentially meaningless.

Of course, some environmentalists realize this and systematically re-frame things as political and point out the greenwashing: we're just not allowed to speak on television, is the main difference.

Nah, the carrying capacity changes as technology improves to support more of the same species (humans). A hunter-gatherer lifestyle would not support billions of people. We have billions of people now because modern civilization makes it possible. If the lights went out for good, our population would fall back to medieval times. (There's a fictional series of books that explores this.) — Marchesk

This is not correct. The fact that technology (which I agree is a big factor) can increase carrying capacity, and technology is largely responsible for going from 1 billion to 7 billion people in a bit over a century, we are currently in ecological overshoot.

I agree that we could use technology to be within ecological capacity for 7 to 10 billion people, but simply because we have the technology to do so doesn't imply it's actually the case.

The longer we stay in overshoot, the worse the ecological consequences are and the harder it will be for 7 / 10 billion people to bring things into stability when we decide to make the effort, and at some point it's impossible and a large die-off will result regardless of our knowledge.

Although science and technology is improving all the time, our ecological problems are getting worse all the time.

It's simply ridiculous risk-mitigation strategy to assume technological improvements will outpace our problems.

It's simply bad scientific literacy to place great faith in the science that provides us modern technologies but suddenly have zero faith in the part of our science that demonstrates severe ecosystem risks of our current setup. The choice between our current infrastructure and production cycles and medieval times is of course a false dichotomy: there's all sorts of ways for society to organize with modern scientific knowledge.

If this misconstrues your position, please elaborate on it.

The primary one is the philosophical interpretations of time: presentism and eternalism. The former was always the default until relativity gave equal if not better footing for the latter, but scientifically (empirically), the two are not distinct. SR does not assert a block universe even if the assumption of one makes the calculations simpler. Hence the difference is philosophical. — noAxioms

I agree it's interesting what historical philosophical trends changed moving from Galilean to Einsteinian relativity.

I wouldn't go as far as to say presentism and eternalism are philosophies that are impacted in anyway. Both philosophies predate any mathematical physics at all, and we can view Newtonian physics as a block universe just as easily as SR, just wasn't the habit.

I would agree that lot's of people build philosophies with an (generally completely unfounded) belief SR, GR, QM and/or QFT* supports their ideas. I find it philosophically relevant to refute such arguments (at least the part connecting to modern science).

However, I don't see how SR, or GR and QM for that matter, displacing Newtonian physics had a big impact on presentism and eternalism, the debate pre-existed both and continues.

Though I agree there is impact on historical trends, I don't think anything's resolved. Even for questions such as the start of the universe, we can posit eternal inflation and similar (non-refutable) ideas that provide an eternal universe compatible with GR. Though it was a shock, to Einstein and others, that our universe as we see it isn't stable, in the end every philosophy requires only trivial updating to account for the new sciences.

*Special Relativity, General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Field Theory (for anyone unfamiliar with these abbreviations).

There's a lesson in these comparisons:

Do you know that the GDP of China was equivalent of the Netherlands in the 1990's? It actually was and earlier it was far lower as the Chinese really had to fight off the possibility of famine. — ssu

By "fight off possibility of famine", do you mean the great leap forward?

And now the GDP is second to the US. There is no possibility of famine in China. So what happened? Did Bob Geldof save the Chinese? No? — ssu

At least for now.

As for what happened, the US cut a deal with the Chinese to open up their economy so multi-national corporations could employ wage and environmental arbitrage to move union factory jobs from the West to China and produce at a fraction of the cost. In exchange for a stable political climate (i.e. no unions allowed communist China) to carry out the outsourcing, China can control their currency, never be bothered by the West about human rights, and keep developing world status even with the second largest GDP as you mention.

Another key factor is China has burned large amounts of coal to power their growth. So, to reduce things to trade and capitalism "working" to lift up the Chinese peasantry, is not the full picture.

To measure societal progress to begin with, of only one metric of being less vulnerable to famine (for now), reducible to GDP, I don't think is a very good approach. To compare China before and after economic opening, is also a false dichotomy; trade rules that would have avoided, at least, environmental arbitrage would have been easy to implement (that things must be produced to the same environmental standards as would be in the West).

Also, in terms of global perspective, industries were starting to clean up and become more efficient with all the environmental regulations coming online. Had industry been unable to simply sidestep those regulations by outsourcing to China, there would have been much more pressure on efficiency and alternative energies much sooner, and we'd be in a better position vis-a-vis climate change today with less total emissions and a more efficient industrial system (both in terms how things are produced and what things are produced).

In terms of an example of capitalism succeeding, it's not necessarily straightforward task to argue that Communist China is exemplary. Though, I'm not sure that's your intention.

In our lifetime we have witnessed the largest expansion of wealth and prosperity and the decline of absolute poverty especially with the rapid historical economic growth in China, but also the growth in South East Asia in general. Also India has made rapid progress.

Yet where do we see this in the discourse about global poverty? Usually nowhere. — ssu

Pointing to (dollar measured) poverty decreases as the ultimate sign of progress of validation of the global economic system and neoliberal ideology that has been running things for the last decades, seems to me very much the mainstream.

I'd say the most popular author on these issues in mainstream is Steven Pinker who basically argues that everything is fine and dandy, heavily relying on decreases in dollar measured poverty which has been mostly in China, and the naysayers are wrong because naysayers have been wrong in the past. At least in English media. And I'd say most people offering criticism (allowed to talk) in the mainstream will still accept this general framework, and then offer a few worries about sustainability and human rights and some potential tweaks to address those issues. Serious deviation I don't think you will find in the mainstream, US and British media at least.

Criticism of this framework is more widespread in environmental and development aid circles, where the China model is not a desirable system for either humans or the environment; that permanent normalized WTO trade relations with China was a mistake on all fronts.

Too much of a change, or moving the discussion on? — unenlightened

Though of course a substantive answer from @I like sushi would be welcome, globalizing the debate is I think a natural step.

Some global capitalism issues, such as wage and environmental arbitrage, have been mentioned, but in discussing poverty in sub-Saharan Africa there are strong consequences of colonialism and neo-colonialism, both of which can be discussed in a framework of capitalism.

As for solutions, what's fortunate turn of events today is that renewable energy can be used independently of the global energy-transport infrastructure (of course you need to be connected enough to get the technology to where you are in the first place, but once there the efficiency of your connection does not determine what is economically viable), and, energy being the base of economic activity, I believe this can be truly revolutionary. The technology doesn't guarantee a political outcome, but my view it's a powerful tool in inclusive community based political action against poverty.

Of course, there are many other issues at play in comparing first world and sub-Saharan African energy usages. Do you find this disparity congruent with your expectations of capitalism as it is, incongruent, or do you find other factors more important?

Agreed, but even when we establish an objective we can still have no way to discriminate between strategic options. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, in terms of strategy, two plans can be equal, and a coin flip can be a convenient method to decide.

For instance, if you build a chess program to find and play the best move it can, if there are two moves that seem equal (which is common both at the start of the game due to being unable to calculate every variation, but also at the end of the game it is common that there are several ways to checkmate in the same amount of moves), it takes little thought to just add some random way to make the move.

There's not much philosophical controversy about some options being equivalent.

Some take the existence of such choices, whether in chess or the choice between shirt colours, as indication that all choices resolve to preference, but as soon as we remember that there's always third choices like "jumping out a 10 story window" it's fairly clear that the mere existence of equivalent decisions doesn't somehow imply all choices are equal (if we've decided we need a shirt in our plan, this is already a very constrained set of actions compared to everything we are motor-capable of doing; indeed, our whole framework of talking about "choices" and "decisions" already excludes the vast majority of options that are available but have no coherent description).

This is a tangent to your inquiry, but criticism of preferentialism may be of related interest to you.

If your interest is in resolving what seem like equivalent choices, there is plenty of subject matter. Such as to what extent preferences can justify decisions, on what basis to treat two options as equivalent compared to the potential of further analysis uncovering a difference, as well as just decision making in general.

However, since you state your purpose as comparing, or building up some elements for the purposes of comparison, central planning vs free market then it's required to step back a little.

Free market proponents may not have the same goal, and so talking about efficiency can serve to distract people into a debate framework that has no resolution as no objective has been specified. In particular, free market proponents state that it's each individual following their own interest (after a vaguely defined participation in a common interest to maintain institutions that enforce property rights) is what's best for the people with property (they may say "best for society" but this always reduces to "people with property").

Most importantly, (beyond a vague duty to collectively enforce property rights) free market proponents generally deny that society can have any collective objective, that all objectives are personal. So, in a free market framework, the question of "what best for the island society" is not a recognized question (there is no society, only individuals). So, what matters is the objectives of the individuals; if individuals was to help save family and friends with their property that's their prerogative, and if they want to "get out ahead" either alone or in covert cooperation with the other best abled people and leave everyone else to die, that would be their prerogative too. In both cases, free market proponents would try to argue that the outcome was the most efficient, either people freely providing charity to help others or then the weak and pathetic getting purged and the strong have survived. It's just evolution. Of course, everything that happens is part of evolution, so if our founding principle is some sort of evolutionary social darwanism, then everything in retrospection is effecient because it is the result of an evolutionary process because it happened.

Consider a roulette wheel. Your objective is to walk out of the casino with as much money as possible. Do you bet your only dollar on red/black, or do you bet it on a number? They have the same ratio of risk to return, and you only have enough money for one initial bet. Which option do you choose, and why? — VagabondSpectre

Again, you are missing the third choice available which is to bet the minimum required to fulfill your scenario and then walk out, precisely because the expected returns of all betting strategies for roulette are equivalently bad; therefore, if the objective is to walk out with as much money as possible then simply walking in and walking out with the money you came in with is the best option. The only thing that would change this is if you are in some situation where a negative expected return is the best option for extraneous reasons: for instance gangsters will kill you in half an hour with the money you have or no money, and the best option available is to try to double your money at roulette; in which case flipping a coin for red or black and placing all your money down I think would be recommended by most mathematicians (you'll still have 25 minutes to try and run if you lose).

Well yes, but aren't I allowed to have underlying intentions? :)

The final sentences of my OP's paragraph frame the understanding I sought to impart:
"Adherence to socialist or capitalist principles, like choosing a strategy for the survival of you or your tribe, is a gamble (a wager that following X principle will tend to lead to individual or overall success). The best we can do is suppose the statistical likelihood of risks and outcomes, which is always limited by our ability to detect and compute unknown variables, especially given potentially vast circumstantial differences between individual cases (which we seldom have the time or interest to investigate thoroughly). — VagabondSpectre

Yes, this is exactly the mistake I am trying to elucidate. You are assuming market adherents have the objective of the survival of their tribe or humanity as a whole. Free market adherents do not have this goal. If they are cornered and forced to accept scientific evidence that ecosystems are in trouble largely due to market driven consumption, they will retreat to either an assumption that these problems will be solved by the market by future innovations (that there is zero value in any mitigating strategy, not because proper risk-analysis indicated going "all in" with presuming future innovations will solve all problems but because their real goal is maintaining property rights and investor value, in other words the status quo) or they will say future generations don't matter (we need not care about them, they are outside our interests by definition and it's just weak morals to care) or they will say things like "life will survive" (evolution, see below) with an honest belief that proposing we destroy civilization and most complex life is simply a suitable outcome for our endeavors (though really they will simultaneously believe all three, and consider the adoption of three incompatible justifications for the same position is strength in numbers and good thinking).

Their appeals might be loose, but they're damned frequent, especially in the neo-conservative from the camps (absolutely everything would be privatized if they had their way). — VagabondSpectre

By "loose" I am referring to the inconsistency of those appeals. In their propaganda, there is a large stress on personal autonomy, because all the institutions that are needed for their vision of society already exist: police, law, corporations, land and other property rights, integrated transportation networks.

However, if they really believed in devolution and decentralization, they would be for a principle of maximum autonomy of local and municipal government, and would totally fine if a local government banned fracking or any other activity on or crossing their land, and had also the power to appropriate anyone's land for whatever purpose having maximum sovereignty over their purview. Neoconservatives would of course be horrified by such an argument based on devolution of responsibility, and indeed whenever local government do anything that would harm corporate interests (protect small business, protect their environment, etc.) neo-conservatives are the first to propose state or federal laws that ban such local exercise of autonomy.

Knowing this, when discussing with a more sophisticated interlocutor they try to remold their arguments in terms of balance and optimization between these principles. However, they cannot say who they are optimizing for (as they only believe in personal objectives, no social objectives), so their arguments make no sense, but they sounded "intellectual" and so the real objects of their dissertations (people who are unsophisticated enough in their thinking to vote against their own interests) are left non-the-wiser.

However, discuss enough and you will discover their only consistent principle is private property; every other principle they will cast aside as soon as it conflicts with private property. So, the reasonable conclusion is that their objective is to maintain property rights, and, in the pursuit of this objective, it is a good play to claim this will benefit society as a whole always, and if defeated in any of these claims simply fall back to property rights being a moral issue and not a social objective issue (which, again, they can't formulate to begin with because only individuals have goals and they don't know the goals of all individuals, except that everyone supports property rights or at least enough of them and if they don't then they are morally incorrect and whatever their interests are should be ignored).

I think with most things it's a mixture of bottom up and top decision making that produces the most robust results, but depending on the actual circumstances, we may be better off centralizing or decentralizing different aspects of our collective and individual decision-making. — VagabondSpectre

Yes, we agree on the framework, but what I hope I've drawn your attention to is that differences in objectives have very deep consequences.

Intellectuals, who think about the future of humanity, like to assume everyone shares the objective of our collective survival, this is not the case. For instance, you will often hear better defenses of neo-conservative by intellectuals that aren't neo-conservatives due to this erroneous belief that they must truly believe their policy objectives are good for everyone and that if parts make no sense from this point of view it must be an honest or cultural mistake. However, it's easy to verify that this "good for everyone" objective simply isn't there. For instance, when neo-conservatives pass laws privatizing public land, even if it's proven by an economist that it's simply not a good business deal for society, this doesn't change their position in anyway and they will try to avoid any such calculation of what the land is worth to society being made in the first place.

Of course this doesn't cover all libertarians; some like the label, don't see a problem with homosexuals or Hispanics and like weed but don't like pointless wars or taxes and want to support the conservative for this tax reason while being able avoid any questions about de facto supporting all the other conservative positions (and so an ideology that has recast taxes as the devil fulfills this roll of being able to ignore all other implications of voting conservative but still "feeling intellectual" and principled about it).

Libertarians that are intellectually curious and concerned about humanity, in my experience, are generally young men persuaded by "useful idiots" that appear on television and seem intellectually respected (as their television appearances are designed to give this affect), and if they stay libertarian it's for tribal group reasons, but they must make so many exceptions to the TV neo-conservative starting point to deal with all the issues (public institutions cannot be maintained by a system of private greed, people voting for their interests which may conflict with elite property interests, there's no reason to allow costs to be externalized, things like child education and firemen do have a public utility and there's no fundamental reason not to expand such public institutions, market failures, corruption etc.) that making all these exceptions really produces a different theory (social democracy of Scandinavia) but they still don't want "that many taxes" so they stick with libertarianism as at least a slowing force to obvious truths.

And, there are some libertarians trying to be truly intellectually consistent with no exceptions, and they end up in places like "anarcho-capitalism" and "seasteading" and view the state (that cannot exist without taxes) as the devil's master; but, I'm not too interested to debate them as they are politically irrelevant and have no theory of government at all (but it's an easy task when the ocassion arises).

Reductio ad Hitlerum. It may help the discussion to consider that term and have a little chuckle at this: — I like sushi

Help the discussion how? Please elaborate.

Trump won for the same reasons Obama did. The system is shit and people want change. But brought the appeal of novelty to the table. — Merkwurdichliebe

It's not quite a fair comparison, considering Obama won the popular vote by a good margin and Trump lost by a good margin.

But I agree that what you point out is how Trump was able to compete, and what Hillary and the DNC completely miscalculated (especially with things like the bank speeches, and other completely avoidable "look at me, I'm establishment" self-branding).

I strongly supported Bernie over Hillary, and while the Democratic establishment clearly favored Clinton it shouldn't be discounted that Hillary received over 3 million more votes (+28% more votes) than Bernie. — Maw

I think the contention is the vote count would have been different without the democratic establishment heavily supporting Hillary (in particular friends in media, counting the super-delegates as already "for Hillary", not renouncing the super delegate system when it came under scrutiny). Also, even if Hillary would have won anyways, I believe the followup contention is the various unfair ruses lowered Bernie supporters and general voters enthusiasm for the democratic party.

That apologists for the Democrat strategy vis-a-vis Bernie (that they don't like him and wanted him to lose so of course they made things unfair) and vis-a-vis Trump (that losing to Trump is somehow not their fault) has no viable arguments -- which I don't think is what you're saying, but that Hillary got more votes without the super delegates doesn't directly relate to what people's issues are with the DNC of 2016.

However, I agree with your view that Democrats is still a better choice than Trump whatever the candidate, and I also agree that it's unfortunate that Trumps words and behaviour and policies is not enough for a strong uniting of the clans.

It has philosophical implications, but none of them were brought up by anybody. — noAxioms

What are the philosophical implications of relativity? For myself, I don't see any other than the question of whether the universe is somehow a priori logically constrained to be as it is or fits some a priori expectations of simplicity, such as causality, cosmological principle and such. Though, mostly I feel the main philosophical implication is simply to refute unfounded philosophical implications of modern physics (i.e. people widely misinterpreting the theories).

I also find it interesting from a history of philosophy perspective, how world views changed from Galilean to Einsteinian relativity. You disagree that there's anything interesting philosophically there?

Of course. There naturally is a political struggle between the right and the left in every Nordic country. But my emphasis is in that there are broad areas that are left alone also. — ssu

I think we're in agreement on substance, but I think the term "left alone" can be misleading to people who have never been to Scandinavia.

I agree that plenty of things happen due to either market dynamics or personal freedoms, but I think, for our American friends here, it's important to point out that the justifications for these market relations and freedoms are not US style libertarian in nature and there is little belief in free market ideology.

What also can sometimes cause confusion is that Scandinavian's have often never been to the US and never interacted with US libertarian or free-market ideology. So, a Scandinavian may easily present free university, lot's of grants to startups, free retraining, state interventions in industry to make failing industries a less disruptive process as well as help capitalize new future growth industries, universal health care, internalizing environmental and social costs of products and services, strong unions, government monopoly on gambling, state funded news, lot's of public transportation, the very existence of Kela, regulations about everything, long maternity and paternity leaves, long vacations, high aggressively progressive taxes, the state just ordering the telecoms to cut their fees in half or double the bandwidth (since technology has improved, so prices or service much change), as all good ways to run a "free market" and view themselves very close to a "free market" country, relative for instance Stalinism (which is of course is pretty true).

In talking with my Finnish friends about US politics, they are often have a hard time making a clear concept of US libertarianism as well as believing that there are many people who hold this view.

But from afar, there are many similar words being used (market, freed, efficiency) that can be easily be misconstrued on each side as agreement. I.e. Scandinavians are generally surprised that there exists a philosophy that views the above mentioned regulations and programs as incompatible with a free market, or that "free market" and just "market" can mean very different things.

Scandinavians, in my experience, generally view welfare state as preferential based, you might prefer lower taxes in exchange for less of the above social programs. But it is generally outside their concept of politics that the government is not responsible to address those social issues with the power and the taxes it has (i.e. that the government should actually leave the poor alone, and interfering is an immoral act that deprives the poor of the character building exercise of becoming not-poor, and whatever terrible lives the poor might live in realizing why and how-not-to-be-poor is an essential part of their heroes journey).

Scandinavians will also obviously agree that taxes can't be 100% and too high taxes can be counter productive that there is an optimum in which the affects on markets such as private investment and attracting talent need to be considered, but likewise state investments in social programs as well as R&D, infrastructure and business may also need funding and contribute to a competitive economy.

So (usually) I find, Scandinavians believe US conservatives and Libertarians motivated by a preference to have lower taxes but then accepting less social welfare policies as a consequence (that it's a trade off other cultures may decide differently) or then that, on occasion, certain taxes may very well be counterproductive. However, Scandinavians are generally unaware that there is a belief that discussion of taxes can be other than efficiency or preference based, that some people view taxes as fundamentally immoral and that no social programs of the kind listed above would lead to a better society for most people and, even if the market didn't that it would be immoral to put in place those social programs via tax -- that if the market failed to deliver which it won't (if it was truly free) but if it didn't for whatever reason, charity would solve those social issues more effectively than government social programs.

Likewise, the very idea of freedom is only partially understood by Scandinavians in the US libertarian sense of non-interference by the state, the other sense in which freedom is understood is the right to participate in democracy and vote for what you believe in, which can include all the social programs above and more.

To make matter more confusing, even when Scandinavians discuss freedom in the libertarian sense, they may come to very different conclusions: "to ensure a free society we must tightly regulate privacy concerns and make sure business, much less the state, does not invade the privacy of citizens online or elsewhere" (leading to much tighter restrictions on what can be done with data, the right to download all one's data, the right to be deleted from a tech companies database, the right not to be tracked in a store etc. without any ability to get around those regulations with TOS), whereas US libertarians discussing the same issue may likely conclude "to ensure a free society we must not-regulate business and whatever TOS a business and a citizen agrees to is a private matter between the business and the user, and any complaining about being unable to avoid the business in question due to a de facto monopoly in their service area must be ignored because the investors and owners of that business are just exercising their freedom to try and make a monopoly -- and them succeeding is just them being awesome, go make your own business!".

I agree.

It is very important to understand the discourse and it's political environment, the context what is referred to when talking about "socialism" or the right and the left. One example is that I assume that many Trump supporters don't know that Angela Merkel is actually a conservative and a right-winger. — ssu

Well, Merkel would be far left in the US political spectrum, she even "let in the Muslims", so I think it's a valid conclusion when looking from the US perspective, that she is a leftist (maybe even to the left of Bernie Sanders) and that there are parties with significant support even farther left than her.

Ideologically, the extreme-right in Europe is only in step with the right in the US on topics like immigration and nationalism and maintaining or strengthening whatever racist institutions are around (which Europe certainly has). As far as I know, there is no right wing party with any significant support that has abolishing healthcare and public education and public transport as a core part of their platform. For instance, the True Finns make it a point to say they aren't against the principle of the welfare state; likewise the Front Nationale in France, just that only Finns/French should be benefiting. Even "corporate friendliness" is not an extreme right-wing thing (as EU corporations generally like the existence of the EU and don't like racism and getting tied to Neo-Nazism, directly or indirectly; so I don't see the extreme-right in Europe viewing the very wealthy or multinational corporations as natural or likely allies; which is to say the right in the EU and US style libertarians have very little ideological overlap, but of course there are neo-Nazis in the US too, which I wouldn't expect any US libertarian to be sympathetic with, though I maybe wrong and there could be some bizarre libertarian-neo-Nazi mix happening; basic point being, comparing the right in the EU and the right in the US is a complicated task).

All that you're saying is that corrupt people will use corrupt means to corrupt. That is true regardless of the means. It's irrelevant who or what they use to corrupt, whether that be physicians, psychologists, priests, police officers, judges, military personnel, or whoever. I get that psychologists, as recognized authorities, wield certain power, but so do all sorts of people. I just don't see that psychologists have that much power over policy in today's society or that they are a particular group that needs to singled out as oppressors. — Hanover

You seem to be either arguing against a strawman, or then that the fact there are other means of oppression as well somehow dilutes the ethical implications of any particular means of oppression.

As for the srawman, I don't see @leo or anyone else trying to single out psychologists as necessarily more oppressive than other means of oppression.

As for some sort of "nothing to see here, plenty of oppressive rolls exist or can exist", if this is your argument, please elaborate. What's it's basis?

I don't think anyone here disagrees that there are other means of oppression available.

Nor is anyone saying, as far as I can tell, that psychologists / psychiatrists form as a group the intention to oppress society.

As I mentioned, the (oppressive) state will try to select for psychologists / psychiatrists who see no problem with state mental health policies, either because they genuinely believe the state is not-oppressive or because they see it as a job that needs to be done (mentally ill do exist; participating in an oppressive system is necessary to help the genuinely mentally ill) or because they simply support an oppressive state and its policies and enforcing compliance they view as simply a good thing (that it's needed to have a "strong country" for instance). And, in terms of moral evaluation, because they are selected for these qualities, moral evaluation becomes more problematic (just as if secret police are selected for brutal and sociopathic qualities, moral evaluation is complicated; "just following orders" becomes a viable defense, that a given agent of oppression is too a victims of oppression is very viable, depends on the particulars).

However, if you are not arguing the above points, we seem to be in agreement that as a position of authority, both in a particular form of deciding how the state deals with particular problematic individuals (either dissidents or "maladapted" to productive life in a oppressive state), as well as a social form in participating in appeals to moral and expert authority of psychiatry to justify oppressive state policies (to for instance label enemies of the state as mentally ill: delusional, maladapted, inherently violent, unproductive due to some mental or moral defect, or or what have you), that they are indeed agents of oppression.

So we agree here, but you seem to want to then imply that because there are other means of oppression, that it is not interesting to discuss any particular roll in an oppressive state.

If this is your point, then we disagree. For people wanting to make their society, as well as contribute to analysis that can help others in other societies, less oppressive, understanding how systems of oppression work, what rolls do what to either maintain the status quo or regress further into despotism, is a prerequisite for effective action.

If it is simply uninteresting to you to carry out such analysis as you don't see a problem where you live, I trust you can agree that it is not therefore uninteresting or useful to all?

If you don't quite see what roll psychiatrists / psychologists can play in oppression, though agree in the abstract that they may play a roll, that is one of the main subject of debate here, and I can offer more examples if your skepticism is on the mechanisms that maybe employed through the practice psychology / psychiatry to enforce compliance to government policy.

If you view all the arguments presented as implicitly against the US system, then it's best to qualify your arguments as "perhaps elsewhere, but not in the US of A". If we are in agreement in principle, then it is a constructive extension of the debate to consider the example of the US: in what ways democracy maybe ineffective and to what extent that could impact the practice of psychology / psychiatry as well as it's public perception.

However, if it is only to circle back to an argument that no one could be responsible anyways, or that contributions of psychiatry and psychology to oppressive mechanisms would be insignificant anyways, then we should first discuss these principles.

I'm in favor of deceit in all its multitude of forms, whether it be to obtain undeserved money, a better job, or the fleeting pleasure of a woman. — Hanover

How are you sure others haven't deceived you into having such a belief (i.e. that the philosophy "deception in all it's forms is good" is unfounded, but deception was used to lead you to believe it true), and, if so, would you view such deception as bad if it was?

The strategic dilemma emerges precisely because we have two different strategies but we don't know which one is optimal. — VagabondSpectre

Optimal for what purpose? Optimization requires a specific objective. So, the optimum strategy will depend on what the objective is. If you do not adequately specify the objective, then the term optimum is not applicable. Your example simply shows why optimization is tied to objective, there is no "optimum in a vacuum".

It's like if I hand you a chair and I say "is this optimum? if not, optimize if for me", you cannot achieve any optimization without knowing (or then speculating) as to my objective with the chair.

If the community is trying to ensure survival of the community as a whole, and so weights more favorably a plan that has a higher probability of "everyone surviving".

If you're an individual who wants the best shot at staying alive, then you probably want the big boat. If you're someone who wants to ensure the continuation of the society and culture, then you want the small boats. Most people probably don't know which they would actually choose. — VagabondSpectre

I agree. What is seen as optimum will be determined by what people's objectives are.

For instance, if the sailors just want to maximize their own survival they may decide the optimum strategy is to build an optimum sized boat for themselves in secret (while pretending to do whatever society decided) and just cast off in the night. Obviously, if they wanted to maximize the survival of others they would never consider that plan (unless, they decide it's become the only plan that will potentially save anyone).

The purpose of this thread was to put one of these strategic coin-flips front and center, the strategic dilemma I chose was only meant to facilitate the example (in hindsight, I focused too much on free markets vs central planning). — VagabondSpectre

You were pretty clear your purpose was to discuss the scenario as an analogy of a free market principle vs central planning principle.

If you want to explore the factors you discuss in your latest post, I have zero qualms. It is an interesting situation, and more followup questions could be asked such as "small boats will save at least 5% of people with 95% chance, but the large boat will save everyone with 70% probability". Even someone that values survival of the culture more may have a cutoff point.

However, the organizational principles you are discussing are not free market vs central planning, but decentralization vs centralization in terms of engineering and devolution of responsibility vs hierarchical management in terms of organizational principle.

As other posters have noted, these principles cannot be resolved in the abstract. For instance, already an engineering example was mentioned of rail building; if you want to make a rail line you can't divide your workforce up into small groups who can all design their mile track as they want and built it where they want; there maybe some innovation in this scenario but zero return on investment in this rail line.

An example of devolution vs hierarchy, is that in a jungle war, devolving command to small platoons that can take their own initiative, do things in their own way and often self-organize with spotty coordination with other platoons and the generals hut, can be optimum; but small groups with spotty coordination wandering around an aircraft carrier is probably not what the captain will choose.

Free market proponents only loosely appeal to devolution and decentralization as supporting principles. Although they certainly don't like centralized micro-management of bureaucratic central planning, they don't mind centralization of production and strict command hierarchies used in large corporations (if the shoe fits). If a corporation succeeds pushing the limits of centralization and hierarchy, then obviously it was a good strategy in this case. Likewise, even for government, when trade requires central bureaucracy and planning (laws, standards, finding pirates, trade treaties and international trade organizations like the WTO) free market proponents are generally supportive (of course, any given law, standard or treaty, they may object to on other grounds), and if local structures attempt to assert local control (use wherever devolution of power they have, or try to get more for the purpose) in a way that would obstruct production of good or trade (for instance, banning fracking on the land overseen by this local political body), then free market proponents are usually supportive of using hierarchy to stop application of devolution of responsibility.

However, to have an analogue of a market economy, there must be private property and actors exchanging goods and services; to have a "free market economy" (as usually understood by self-identified free-market proponents, at least in the US), there is usually the principle that failing to compete and gain wealth should not be rewarded by other people's taxes, directly nor through programs like education and healthcare (or there are no taxes to begin with in some schemes), and there is usually a heavy dose of "deregulation" (but I have never seen a formulation of deregulation that does not reduce to "I want to get rid of rules I don't like ... but hold on, don't get rid of the rules I do like!"; but I'd be interested to meet one).

The point of my third strategy is to point out you can have a free market in your scenario: everyone relying on their own wealth and trading and selling to achieve whatever strategy they personally think is best for themselves. If you agree it's absurd to rely on a free market economy to solve the problem in your scenario, to the point it won't even occur to most people, I agree.

I'll concede the tautology. Oppressive governments will be oppressive. I just don't see how that translates into oppressive governments being more likely to use psychologists than they will plumbers to get what they want. Why are you targeting psychologists as the masterminds for the oppressive governments? If you think, for example, that today's America is manipulated by the government (and some surely do), that doesn't mean that this manipulation was orchestrated by a team of dark psychologists. What it means is that the people in power have manipulated people by the rhetoric and whatnot. They've not had their opposition institutionalized into psychiatric hospitals and declared crazy. — Hanover

Yes, this is my central contention, that psychiatry/psychology is a better tool of oppression than plumbing, that there will be more attention paid to who gets to be a psychiatry/psychologists (that their beliefs are compatible with state policy) than who gets to be a plumber. Plumbers are a group I would argue most oppressive states categorize as general population needing to be generally controlled.

For instance, using pharmacology to make bad working conditions more tolerable, I would argue is a mechanism of oppression in an oppressive state; part of the control system. From the perspective of psychiatrists implementing this policy, people feel better at work, they feel they've "done good". This is not to pass moral judgement, as they may not have any information (thanks to control of media) to criticize what they are doing; but from the outside analyzing such a situation we can very much doubt if they are really "doing good".

That view of a democracy is Utopian. There is not any such democracy nor could there be. It's an ideal you've posited. — Hanover

I outline a "cause / effect" relationship. If the conditions I present exist, then I argue my expectations would follow. I do not say "we can achieve perfect democracy, and only in a perfect democracy will psychology and psychiatry be non-oppressive". In other words, I am presenting the features of democracy that I feel mitigate the problem. The more we approach such conditions, the more the problem diminishes.

This complaint is not a universal objection, having no more to do with psychology than any other science, religion, political theory, or common mythology. Bad people use recognized authorities to persuade others to their view. There's no reason to target psychology in this attack over any other group of alleged experts or authorities. — Hanover

I am not targeting "only psychologists", I even mention police and soldiers who also maintain the power structure. In an oppressive society, some people are the oppressors, some the agents of oppression (how else does the system maintain itself?), and some the oppressed.

But it's best viewed as a spectrum, with some rolls very clearly the "oppressor" (dictator, top brass of secret police, and the like), some rolls are clearly agents of oppression (guy who rounds people up for torture), and some rolls are clearly the oppressed (slaves, poor farmer, factory workers); however, many rolls can be in various grey areas, perhaps contributing to oppression one day and undermining it a bit the next (if the activity is not particularly dangerous, the state cannot devote much energy to optimizing it's oppressive effect; i.e. an oppressive state will devote a lot more energy to controlling journalists and micro-managing what they say than to controlling how a plumber goes about his or her day).

My general framework here is that not all jobs are equal in an oppressive society, everyone just "trying to get by"; that, for instance, the torturer or executioner is just "doing a job". There is a moral dimension to what one does in society; now, passing moral judgement requires a lot more information than simply what nominal roll one is doing (and considering the state will select people for oppressive rolls that don't see their roll as oppressive but just a "job that needs doing" just like farming or anything) it makes moral evaluation even more difficult. However, though it's an important element to the discussion (since we must, at least, evaluate our own roll and decision), my main interest here is to argue that psychology/psychiatry is a particularly dangerous tool of oppression (like the police and soldiers are a particularly dangerous tool of oppression; why there was a movement against standing armies during the emergence of modern democracies).

I also mention, that most improvements to conditions in society is not by defeating the agents of oppression but by convincing enough of them to join the cause of justice and democracy of the day. The purpose of such analysis is that anyone wanting more justice and more democracy is more effective if they understand better the current structure of society what different rolls do in relation to existing oppressive features; how to actually go about changing things is another debate.

We don't have to live in a Utopian state in order to allow psychologists (or anyone for that matter) to provide input into the democratic process. Psychologists are but one voice among many, and their power is checked by the multitude of other interests in society. — Hanover

Did I say anything remotely like this: that only in a utopian state can psychologists (or anyone have input) into the democratic process?

Psychologists are but one voice among many, and their power is checked by the multitude of other interests in society. — Hanover

Yes, we agree. If democracy is working effectively everyone can have a voice; both psychologists/psychiatrists can voice their ethical concerns about mental health policy, as well as anyone else. I go to some lengths to explain why the danger of mental health workers acting as enforcement of oppressive state policies is significantly less dangerous in a an effective democracy.

The questions then boils down to what is effective democracy. I think it's clear most posters here are only thinking about the US; however, I have written here mostly about principles (as well as noting a global perspective where there are places like China with "re-education" camps right now).

If one is not convinced one is living in an effective democracy, then my argument is psychology/psychiatry play an important roll (are a powerful tool) in achieving a wide range of state policy objectives; both in relation to passifying individuals who may otherwise become politically active, a roll in punishing people who become politically active, as well as a roll in forming public discourse (i.e. justifying the policies to begin with, by appeals to "expertise").

Now, as for the US, the question of whether the US is an effective democracy where the power of powerful individuals or groups, like psychiatry or pharmacology interests (not to say they are the "most powerful"), is actually checked by the multitude of other interests, is another debate, one which I am sure is suitable for thrphilosophyforum.

My point here, is that all the issues discussed in this thread very much depend on one's opinion of the government in question. If one finds the government sufficiently just and fair, then it's reasonable to trust that the rules and norms being expressed through psychology/psychiatry ("helping people adapt to society") are just and fair. If one feels one's government is not sufficiently just and fair, then one should expect such a government to use the tools of psychology/psychiatry and mental health sphere to maintain the power relations, where ever possible.

The point is that the psychologists themselves, who you are suggesting are drunk with power to control society. — Hanover

No, this is not my point. No where did I say psychologists are drunk with power to control society. What I say was that an oppressive government is going to have oppressive policy objectives and will train for and select for psychologists and psychiatrists that are effective at achieving those objectives, just as with the police and military (which doesn't imply "all police are bad" or "the science of criminology doesn't exist" or that the only solution is a "utopia, and until we have utopia we must get rid of police, soldiers or psychologists").

The findings of psychologists resulted in turning the system into one more retributive than rehabilitative and therefore reduced their own influence. — Hanover

Again, no where did I say it was psychologists dictating justice system policy. You seemed to present the thesis that there was a link between abandoning the policy of relying heavily on mental health diagnosis in dealing with and "rehabilitating" criminals (that turned out to be based a lot of unrepeatable "science") and the next policy to increase punishment, decrease all methods of rehabilitation, and increase the prison population. The implication seemed to be that "criticism" of psychology/psychiatry roll in the justice system at that time led to a worse system.

My rebuttal is that, first of all, there is no logical link between these events; presented as you did, your argument is a false dichotomy. Whatever problems in the academic literature (what was widely considered fact ... but turns out it wasn't) as well as in the structure of mental health for prisoners could have been solved, improving mental health services for inmates, while employing all sorts of other policy changes that increase rehabilitation rates, as well as policy changes that lower the prison population (i.e. abandoning the "war on drugs").

My secondary point, tangentially related to the main issues of the debate, is that I view a direct link between the civil rights movement, the dissident scientists challenging the status quo of psychiatry (it was certainly not the psychology/psychiatry community as a whole that suddenly abandoned pseudo-scientific theories justifying segregation and other social injustices), and a direct link with features of American society that are part of what I would call effective democracy (freedom of speech, independent press, etc.). However, the struggle against oppression is ongoing; today, I would say a new problem has arisen, in particular in pharmacology, where it is possible to influence the scientific review process (i.e. vast webs of conflicts of interest, revolving door, captured regulators) and also influence society's view of what mental health is and what needs treatment. For instance, in the 70s, a lot of the dissident scientists challenging the status quo could perform very cheap experiments (for instance, walking into an asylum and seeing what happens, is a cheap experiment to do); today, a lot of the studies are extremely expensive to repeat, and so a scientist without conflicts of interest that wants to do repeat studies needs government funding (in an effective democracy, I would expect the government to be like "yes, we definitely want to give a lot of money to those guys trying to keep everything honest and on really firm observational and statistical grounds"; in an oppressive / corrupt system, the government may not like these kinds of people, and may not promote them to positions of influence from which they can direct funding for verification purposes as well as cry foul if they see systemic weaknesses in the process of both validation and implementation of regulation and policy).

In the last sentence lies the crucial point: It's not a path to socialist tyranny. The welfare programs aren't a stepping stone to something larger. The Nordic model starts from the basic understanding that government programs are paid by tax revenue and because it's the private sector's job to create this tax revenue, the private sector and the capitalist system is basically left alone. — ssu

Though we are in fairly good agreement, it would be misleading to say Scandinavia leaves private sector alone in the sense of deregulation. The government doesn't own (much) of the private sector, yes, but everything is very much regulated, so I wouldn't say it "leaves it alone".

True socialism (in my view) starts from the idea that government can and indeed it is it's role to own the industries and hence make the revenues required by itself. — ssu

I don't think the argument of what "the true definition" of something is, is productive. Words are conventions, conventions can change as well as be specified further by other language in a given context.

Marxist socialism essential feature is for the means of production to be owned by the workers; Marx does not specify much how this would be organized or accomplished. However, the world socialism and socialist both pre-date Marx as well as have evolved since. I would say it's not very historically accurate to equate socialism with Marxism.

Very few people today I would guess are using socialism to refer to all industries run by the state, or even just enough industries run by the state to generate the revenue the state needs. For instance, lot's of countries own industries and generate all or most of their revenue with them; some of them consider themselves and are considered to be socialist, some not.

I would argue that the broad usage of socialism in the US today is to refer to social programs; to which the conservatives would cry "that's socialism!", so after trying and failing to educate on the difference of social democracy and social programs and whatever "socialism" is loaded with, Bernie Sanders decided to just own the term, so now it's evolving to mean what Sanders is referring to (in many, certainly not all contexts), which we agree is basically the Scandinavian style social programs.

The best role for The People is to keep the political and corporate feet to the fire -- as the expression goes. In the meantime, The People should start walking, bicycling, and using mass transit. — Bitter Crank

I like your points, but I would change the above to "Advocate for more and use whatever effective walking, bicycling and mass transit systems are available". That trying to do "everything ecologically" is simply impractical (short from building yert and living in isolation), was a central grievance of the OP.

The United States have used race to oppress people. Portugal more specifically King Leopold II used religion (in addition to race) to oppress. — Anaxagoras

And you would say this of all first world nations?

That remains to be seen. I never experienced what effective democracy looks like, and considering that any political system that stems from a human is flawed so I look at your worldview with much skepticism. — Anaxagoras

Please revisit my points. I do not say an effective democracy is without flaws and humans would be perfect within it; I say democracy can solve the issue of dangerous state organs, as with the police and military.

The problem with your view is that you lack understanding to the nature of various psychological illnesses and conditions. Your so-called explanation does not address the generations of psychological/physiological disorders and diseases people of have contracted, nor does it explain how the removal of the systems of oppression will prevent future mental distress and the necessary removal of psychiatrists/psychologists. — Anaxagoras

This is not my view at all. I do not say removing oppression would remove mental illness, nor that removing psychiatrists/psychologists would remove oppression. Where do you get that from?

I also say that even in an oppressive system, successes could be pointed to of effective mental health treatment.

I do not deny mental health is a thing and people can be mentally ill, my point is that under an oppressive state, dissidents, mentally healthy people subject to intolerable conditions (i.e. the oppressed), and the mentally ill, are all grouped together and the state does not employ (or tolerate the employment of such people by others) people interested in distinguishing these categories.

How does effective democracy answer for ADHD, Down Syndrome, Anti-Social Personality Disorders (which research has indicated that some children have experienced behaviors associated with it)? — Anaxagoras

Again, this is not my position and I don't see which of my statements would lead you to believe I am advocating that under an effective democracy all mental illness would disappear.

However, the difference with a oppressive state is that an effective democracy would consider and debate all aspects of these issues and try to tease out ethical nuances as well as allow different opinions from both professionals and laypersons to be voiced as to the causes due to environment and social organization that better government policy can do something about.

A fully totalitarian oppressive state will not allow for any discussion that challenges state policy, much less have people vote on anything, and will likely (being oppressive) have terrible conditions contributing immensely to genuine mental health issues as well as, mentioned above, group all dissidents and "disruptive elements" into the same mentally ill category. If treatments reduce disruption then they are successful and there is good empirical evidence that the "treatments work".

Of course, there's a large spectrum between complete totalitarianism and what I call an effective democracy, and a mix of democratic elements and oppressive elements can exist in which case things can be more complicated than the above examples.

You, me, Dr. Israelstam, and the head psychiatrist at UW. — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, I am interested in what principles, if any, would be true in all circumstances.

I am not so interested in morally evaluating you, Dr. Israelstam, or the head psychiatrist at UW. As I mention in a post above, morally evaluating the actions of specific individuals is a very lengthy task.

I am of course interested in evaluating my own actions; though I would agree I am highly unlikely to single handedly change the world and vanquish all the oppressors out there, I believe I am able to make a contribution to a community that may, some day, if not eliminate, at least significantly reduce oppressive circumstances in the world.

I’m talking about individuals. You’re talking about generalities. — Noah Te Stroete

Which individuals? Please point them out.

[Edit] to make my point perfectly clear: are you referring to individuals such as you and me specifically, or individuals in the general sense?

You can say that about any powerful first world society. — Anaxagoras

How so?

Which is what I've done during my residency yet according to you, psychiatrists/psychologists are agents of oppression. — Anaxagoras

Please read my comments, I am pretty clear that my view is psychiatrists/psychologists are agents of oppression in an oppressive state, and that my view is effective democracy solves the problems of the dangers of behavioral sciences used to manipulate society; just as effective democracy solves the problem of the dangers of police and military institutions.

If you want to argue no states on earth are oppressive that would be another debate; if true (that there are no oppressive states) then my points here would be hypothetical. If you want to argue your particular government is not oppressive, that would be another debate. Both debates would be relevant, but it is not the issue I am addressing here.

I am not arguing a just society should not have police or soldiers or psychiatrists/psychologists, and that these would not be agents of justice in a just society.

pray tell what system do you refer? — Anaxagoras

My arguments are on the level of principle. If we agreed in principle then it would make sense to start discussing particulars. The principle I am arguing in the instance you cite is "even in a system that does more harm than good, an individual psychiatrist can be doing more good than harm". I'm not referring to a particular system.

It seems like you think you can have an impact on societal affairs. If so, that sounds an awful lot like delusions of grandeur. — Noah Te Stroete

Really? That's what you understood from my comments.

I say "But even if your statement is true for you and for me [that we cannot change the world at all], I am largely an adherent to stoic formulation of ethics where the intention and "giving a good ol' try" is what matters." And you deduce I have delusions of grandeur?

State oppression? Welcome to the world as it’s been since the formation of communities. No one will ever change that. — Noah Te Stroete

Democracy doesn't exist? The transatlantic slave trade is still humming along? Segregation never ended? Or are none of these things changes to the oppressive nature of all human communities?

Now, if you live in Saudi Arabia, then it does very well need drastic changes. Just don’t stick your neck out too far lest your head get cut off. — Noah Te Stroete

So trying to make the world a better place would be reasonable in Saudi Arabia in your view, as long as you don't get caught? But elsewhere your recommendation is to just feel as good as you can about the world and let it evolve as it wont to do? Or are you also recommending that to people in Saudi Arabia, just pointing out they got a bad lot?

Do you live in the United States? Is this an oppressive society? It certainly is if you are a young black man living in poverty, for example. — Noah Te Stroete

This is another issue, certainly warranting debate. However, in this discussion I'm only interested in establishing that an oppressive state will naturally use mental health sciences as a tool to further oppression. And evaluating whether a state is oppressive or not is outside the domain of psychiatry.

That we should expect to find psychiatrists, on the whole, agents of and beneficiaries of state oppression, rather than other jobs like agriculture and factory work where we would expect to find the oppressed (assuming an oppressive state, of course). Now to what extent is each psychiatrists personally morally responsible and to what extent "just plodding along and following orders" is again another debate.

So, yes, I decided that it is best not to rock the boat too much because I was a target of the authorities at one time. I decided that I cannot change the world. Most psychiatrists are no different, and the good ones want to help people out of compassion. I decided I want to feel better as the world is. I suggest you give up your idealism and just let society evolve as it is wont to do. — Noah Te Stroete

To answer your first question, I don't live in the US; I moved to a country (from a country other than the US) where I have even less fear of "rocking the boat" and becoming "a target of the authorities" then from whence I came.

I decided that I cannot change the world. — Noah Te Stroete

Not even a little?

But even if your statement is true for you and for me, I am largely an adherent to stoic formulation of ethics where the intention and "giving a good ol' try" is what matters.

Most psychiatrists are no different, and the good ones want to help people out of compassion. — Noah Te Stroete

Because most people are like you? Or because psychiatrists are selected based on having a similar outlook? Though, at no point did I morally condemn any psychiatrist; for me it's largely irrelevant part of the debate. Just like condemning individual police or soldiers for their roll in state oppression. However, there are exceptions to this general rule, but simply being in the category is not such an exception in my view; more particulars would be needed about what someone knows, what actions were participated in, opportunity to do otherwise, degree of coercion etc. I have pointed out twice now that an individual psychiatrist can still be doing more good than harm even in a system that does more harm than good.

I decided I want to feel better as the world is. I suggest you give up your idealism and just let society evolve as it is wont to do. — Noah Te Stroete

Society's evolution is not independent of my actions, so what you say is simply not logically coherent: it is not an exterior system I can choose to leave alone. If I choose to maintain the status quo, I would be contributing to that evolution not letting it "evolve as it is wont to do".

Boethius gets the Godwin Prize for being the first in the discussion to play the Nazi card. Yet another confirmation of Godwin's Law. — andrewk

Great attempt at deflection, but in this conversation your point isn't even factually correct. I cited Leo's mention of Nazism and explained why it had good points that merited a response. The entire purpose of my post was to recast what I viewed as salient philosophical points into less extreme circumstances.

How could I be first, if I'm citing someone else and trying to explain the philosophical merits of their comment?

Perhaps it should be a rule that any thread gets automatically closed after one hundred posts, to head off the inevitable Nazi comparisons. — andrewk

No one here is calling anyone else a Nazi, so you're not even using Godwin's law correctly to begin with. Furthermore, any academic course of medical ethics will bring up the Nazi's, but you seem to think it's irrelevant, is my understanding of your comment correct? Should we just ignore this period in history or at least cut off any attempt to learn from the evils and mistakes committed at 100 posts?

Is it the job of psychiatrists to change society into a more just one? — Noah Te Stroete

At least as much as anyone else.

Or is it there job to help individuals who are struggling to feel better? — Noah Te Stroete

This is one of the central issues. To what extent is "feeling bad" a mental health issue, and to what extent it is a good reaction to bad circumstances (that can be changed through political action). In what circumstances is government intervention in how people "feel" about society, morally justifiable, to what extent it a tool of oppression.

Furthermore, there are good psychiatrists and bad psychiatrists. When I was at the UW psych ward, I was told by the head psychiatrist that he couldn’t change the world, but he could help me feel better. In my opinion, he was a good psychiatrist.

Dr. Israelstam of Madison, Wisconsin, told me after I told him that I was suicidal that he hoped he’d never see me again after he suggested that I might want to try heroin. He ended up going to prison on child pornography charges. He was a bad psychiatrist. — Noah Te Stroete

In my responses, I pointed out that even in a oppressive system, a given psychiatrist could be helping more than harming. The general issues here are not reducible to "bad psychiatrists and good ones", and so the only ethical issue is "bad apples" that are progressively being removed with best practices discovered over time.

I also point out that I believe mental health does exist and a valid science can exist addressing it, and the practice of psychiatry today, under most if not all systems in the world, can point to successes.

But pointing to some successes, this does not establish that more good than harm is taking place, neither in a given system nor if we consider psychiatrists as a global community.

My intention here is not to prove this is the case, and to what degree, but to discuss the relevant principles.

To offer a simplification that can synthesize my points so far and where I am going with them, mental health professionals become the agents of state oppression in an oppressive state, simply because an oppressive state will set things up to achieve it's oppressive policies. So, mental health becomes in the same category as the police and military. Of course, policemen and soldiers of an oppressive state can too point to instances where they are "helping people", but ultimately they are enforcing oppressive control that does more harm than good. The roll of psychology and psychiatrists is less obvious in the maintenance of control but, I would argue today is actually more effective. Keep in mind that an oppressive state uses an excess of propaganda and educates people from a young age with that propaganda, and so if and when an individual starts to "feel something is wrong" they have not been provided the opportunity to study the history of philosophy and so cannot immediately articulate "why they feel things are wrong". In an oppressive state, mental health practitioners main function in the state system is to intervene in this process of become socially conscious and convince the would-be-political-active person that they have a mental health issue, that they are not adapted to society and they will feel better if they are fixed and able to adapt. Adaptability of presupposes it is a worthwhile objective to adapt to society as it is. The claim psychiatry is helping people more than harming them, is thus reducible to the claim that society is justly organized, and so people that "don't feel good" have a mental health issue and they should be convinced, and in some cases forced, to adapt to government mandated expectations of behaviour. If society is not justly organized but oppressive, then people who "don't feel good" are having, most of the time, a healthy reaction to intolerable social conditions. Now, what is "a just organization of society" is of course the central question, one discussed on this forum tirelessly, but if my argument follows, the point is that psychiatry cannot refer to a scientific standard to justify it's roll in society.

Now, if all this is established, I of course don't expect many psychiatrists in an oppressive system to care or do anything; they are selected for training and elevated to positions of authority precisely because they either agree with the social engineering program of the state or don't view it as their business to care or comment on. The purpose of my argument is first to simply to establish the truth of what basis psychiatry can be be said to doing more good than bad, and, a second less important point, that understanding the roll of psychiatry and psychology in state oppression is essential to resisting it, just as understanding the roll of police and the military are prerequisites to resisting oppressive power. Now, in such a struggle against oppression, the agents of oppression are both an obstacle and a potential ally; most large political changes occur when the agents of the state abandon state propaganda and side with the resistance.

Of course, in an effective democratic society where everyone has equal say and neither the political process nor social organization in general cannot be argued to be lowering the say or marginalizing any would-be-oppressed group, there is no need for "resistance" but simply participating in the political process if one has concerns about government mental health policies.