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BALANCE_OF_PRAGMATISM

                                              April 4, 2003

The guys who created the US constitution
didn't just throw up their hands
and say "who will watch the watchmen?"

They hacked a system that worked
in spite of it's apparent impossibility:
A machine that's staggered toward               Though I sometimes
the light for a few centuries...                wonder if it's in
                                                its death throes...

                                                      DEATH_OF_THE_REPUBLIC

                                                              TONE_DOWN

And in that light,
let's consider
another conundrum:

        There are clear cases of the
        majority of americans making bad           STATISTICAL_INDIVIDUAL
        personal decisions.

                      Does it call into question         Also in DRAG.
                      "individual freedom" as a
                      core political value?


   Many, if not most people                But then, if history is any guide,
   aren't competent at making              they're even worse at making
   decisions for themselves.               decisions for other people.



The libertarian take is that
"let the individuals decide
for themselves" is optimum,       WHEN_THE_DEVIL_QUOTES_SCRIPTURES
if perhaps not ideal.

   The only check on individual
   authority is when it runs
   into another individual's       And this point alone can
   territory.                      be used to make a strong
                                   libertarian argument
                                   against SUVs.

                                     FREEDOM_AGAINST_CARS





But I submit that "individualism"
may in fact not be optimum.  There
may be another answer, something
in the spirit of the pragmatic
idealism that forged the American
constitution.

There may be something
that works better --         Some sort of analogy to
and if that were so, it      the system of checks and
would be favored by an       balances?
honest consequentialist.

                                              ("Consequentialism" is the
  And in fact, we've                          idea that you should choose
  never seen a world                          an ethical system based on
  where a simple                              the likely consequences, as
  principle like                              opposed to deriving it from
  "individualism" has                         some other central
  been played out on                          principle.)
  it's own, in
  isolation.                                      THE_WORKS


          The only
          cases we've
          ever really
          seen have
          been hybrids.



A method:                  A method: try to
Consciously play           write down the way
the game of                the world really
hybridization,             works, and pick and
look for other             choose from the
principles to use          menu of what has
to "moderate"              been done.
things.
                             As opposed to
                             taking the utopian
                             approach favored
                             by many               But I've got nothing
                             libertarians.         against utopian
                                                   scheming myself --
                                                   provided you keep in
                                                   mind that that's what
                                                   you're doing.


                                                     So let's call that
                                                     another approach:

                                                     What would we really like?
                                                     Can we get closer?



                        Just to have a tag to
                        discuss this, let's     (Or perhaps
                        call this "Moderate      "moderated?")
                        Libertarianism",
                        ModLib for short.


                                       Everyone likes to be
                                       a "moderate".  And
                                       "Libertarian" has
                                       always been grossly
                                       inelegant on the
                                       modern political
         Sometimes I play              landscape: a long
         around with talking           clumsy term with no
         about 'tarians and            elegant shortening
         'brals.                       that doesn't get
                                       confused with "Liberal".
            Maybe: "Modtarian"?
            Dodge any confusion                 And "ModLibs"
            with librals.                       sounds like the
                                                popular word game
                  (brawls                       Madlibs.
                   about
                   'brals?)                                      Positive
                                                                 associations.
                                                                 Sort of.
                                 Actually, these
                                 are all pretty
                                 terrible.

                                    Work on the naming
                                    problem more seriously
                                    some time.
                                                        ACTIVE_NAMING

                                        Looking for a
                                        third wheeze...





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