Back when mises.org had the forums, someone posed an hypothetical situation (ugh) of a “uncoerced exchange” between a young boy and a group of pedophiles. The boy has no means of acquiring resources somehow, so he exchanges sex with the group of pedophiles for food and shelter, etc. The idea with this situation is that free market libertarianism cannot say this exchange is immoral because it is voluntary on both sides (for the record, I don’t think it does qualify as moral either; that an exchange between consenting parties doesn’t necessarily make it moral but the consent is necessary for it to at least be not immoral).
Making this kind of argument ends up being a roundabout way of necessitating a state, as though dilemmas like this can be decided by the presence of coercive authority structures. Stefan Molyneux mentions it here lays out the problem the 7:45 mark, pretty much until the end, in response to this article in the New York Times. Besides the misunderstanding of the basics of free-market libertarianism, the critique is clumsy and appeals to cheap emotionalism.
I can understand the need to find a “universal moral constant” that can apply in every situation, but coming to a satisfactory moral rule from such unapplicable hypotheticals won’t help in everyday life choices. The idea that there’s a roving horde of heartless pedophiles and one boy and there’s no normal community of people somewhere within walking distance that would take the boy in is ludicrous on its face. The anthropology of human society just doesn’t work like that. Just because it can be conceived on an abstract level doesn’t mean it could happen de facto.
This isn’t to mention, too, that people in these goofball ethical scenarios are always in survival mode. I’m going to doubt that a ten year old is going to really give too much of a damn about playing catcher for a bunch of dudes/women if it means he gets proper food and shelter.
What I find is that most people that argue like this really, that are fine with governments, end up providing arguments against the state—the very thing they set out to support. Seeing as the state is defined by the exclusive use of the initiation force, there can’t be anything moral about its existence or anything it does.
6 Comments
Oh, goody. I’m catching up on your blog. I have a problem with arguments made from hypothetical situations. They remind me of the tactic lawyers sometimes take, when they ask the person on the stand a series of questions and demand that the person answer with only yes or no. It forces the person into a false dichotomy that is meant to remove context from truth statements. I find hypothetical posturing to be similar, except that this tactic forces a false context onto a truth statement. Certainly, I’ve been foolish enough to use hypotheticals, especially regarding doctrines such as “turn the other cheek” that calls for no fighting back, even in self-defence of little ones. This is the problem with legalism, as well as binary thinking. It’s far easier to shift or remove the context than it is to understand underlying principles.
Not only is it often an appeal to emotion (in this case, using children), but it doesn’t comport with what we know about how humans act. People in extreme life-threatening situations aren’t in philosophizing mode, they’re in “how do I stay alive” mode, which involves more sensual and instinctual-based behavior. In the utter nonsense of the pedophilic hordes, the situation demands that the horde consider some worldwide (or even localized) food shortage and they act knowing the scarcity. So, it’s implied, it’s not a case of the kid thinking:
“These people want to sodomize me but they will offer me food and protection, yet it’s less risky for me to steal from the corner grocer so I’ll just do that.”
And it’s more like:
“These people want to sodomize me but they will offer me food and protection, and there’s nary a celery stalk between Boston and L.A., and these pervs are loaded with McNuggets and vitamin water. Who’s first?”
The situation needs this kind of information, because that’s the information these actors have in considering the exchange. But the very mention of a child just does something like rewiring to our rationalization so we have to resort to a big huge NO THAT’S NOT FAIR. But there are degrees of that, and unfortunately it’s Westernized philosophical tradition to boil everything down to 0’s and 1’s.
Yes, the manipulation through using children as a what-if made me think of the “turn the other cheek” theological debate. People often bring up “well, would you turn the other cheek if somebody was raping your daughter?” Heck, even I’ve been foolish enough to use this kind of argument as a gut reaction. Honestly, though, it obscures the underlying principle of Jesus turning his own and not defending himself. It has nothing whatever to do with whether he would defend somebody else. And that, I think, is the crux of the argument, or the underlying question that is missed by binaries. As an afterthought, I hate it when authors use child trauma or abuse as a manipulative tactic to shut down critical thinking and to connect the reader emotionally to the text, even if the writing stinks. Two “recent” classics that use this tactic are The Shack and The Lovely Bones.
I shouldn’t have said “even I”. It makes it sound like I’m so very logical that it’s hard to believe. Heh. Yeah, right.
Do you mean those two books have characters that are fallacious or that the author is using fallacious arguments to make a point about an issue?
The “turn the other cheek” verse has been thoroughly abused. Jesus’ preaching in nearly all cases were contextual with the cultural/legal environment, and he was actually giving advice to people on messing with Roman authority in a non-violent way (don’t have time to get into it now). How this can be interpreted into a universal law for pacifism is just lazy eisegesis.
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