Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

I am extremely uncomfortable with the conflation of harms inflicted by violent threat with "harms" that do not entail violence. The whole idea of inflicting extreme forms of organized, irresistible violence such as taxation on persons accused of causing non-violent harms to others (e.g. causing distress to the envious by being richer or prettier) is completely repugnant.

This is especially poignant in the context of the state: State-inflicted violence is extremely cheap - once a coercive monopoly exists, it is as cheap as paying a uniformed thug 15$ an hour to enforce whatever law the state machine came up with. On the other side there is an enormous harm inflicted on the victims of the law, the harm of being exposed to and broken by violence. Therefore, whoever manages to get a hold of the levers of state power can extremely cheaply inflict almost arbitrary levels of violent harm on his victims - and the state is *built* to prevent any form of measuring the relative moral weights of violent harms inflicted on a law's victims vs. the "harms" allegedly prevented by the law.

This situation is the antithesis of moral efficiency that Robin wants to achieve - there is no bargaining process or any other effective way of measuring the relative weights of harms involved, and therefore using the state to achieve one's goals is extremely likely to increase the overall harms inflicted on members of the ingroup.

Would you think otherwise?

Expand full comment
Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Ok, here's a context and a "harm".

Context: Horseless carriages are becoming commonplace.

Harm: Unemployment in horse-related industries: stable hands, street scoopers, buggy whip manufacturers, saddle makers, etc.

Question: Should government act, (and if so how) to mitigate this harm.

Expand full comment
5 more comments...

No posts