For Libertarianism To Work, People Have To Know All The Things All The Time

[phantom power]

Basically, the FDA will be requiring food manufacturers to provide, for the equivalent number of calories, less damage to your actual bloodstream. This has nothing to do with how much anyone weighs, as some fat people have pretty good cholesterol levels and some skinny people have terrible cholesterol levels. Nor is this about taking away donuts or any other high calorie treat.

Rand Paul wants his audience to believe that this shows the government thinks you’re too stupid to make your own decisions, and that shows how stupid he actually thinks his audience is. No one is doing this because they think you’re stupid. On the contrary! It’s because the FDA officials realize that knowing what trans fats are and what they do to your body is specialized knowledge, and not having that knowledge doesn’t say anything about your baseline intelligence. I imagine the FDA officials who are prescribing this don’t think that they’re being accused of being “stupid” if they don’t, say, know how to fix an internal combustion engine. The notion that you’re being accused of being “stupid” if you don’t know all things at all times is a childish way to think. Or, you might say, stupid.

I think I’m a fairly intelligent person who has performed well on standardized tests and whatnot. But when I walk into a coffee shop and purchase a baked good, I have zero ability to know how much damage it’s doing to me on a molecular level just by looking at it. I can’t tell if it’s made with butter, olive oil, or a trans fat. I do not have X-ray vision or psychic powers. I am not insulted if you point this out. On the contrary, I’m grateful to live in a world where basic survival doesn’t require me to know all the things all the time. But libertarian paradise is not only one where trans fats aren’t banned, but also one where the baker is allowed to withhold that information from me. Basically, to not be “stupid” by the libertarian estimation, you really do need to have psychic powers.

Indeed, the childish/stupid insistence that the only way you’re being respected is if we pretend you know all the things all the time is the governing philosophy of libertarianism. Which, ironically, is why I have no fucking respect for them at all. It’s idiotic to ignore the fact that we live in a complex world where the things that need to be known are so numerous that no one person can hold them in their heads at all time. We divide people up and give them ownership of certain forms of knowledge and allow each other to be the authorities for it. For example, I can rattle off all sorts of shit about reproductive health off the top of my head, but I couldn’t remember what it was exactly that made trans fat so bad. So I googled it. But even that is really too big an ask if someone is trying to do something as simple as make a $2 purchase of a donut at an airport kiosk. It really is okay not to know everything about every kind of bad thing you could eat. That’s why we, as the taxpayers, hire someone to do that job for us. And then a bunch of whining children who have bizarre ideas about respect complain about it. Jesus.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/13/for-libertarianism-to-work-people-have-to-know-all-the-things-all-the-time/

[zipplewrath]

1. And to some extent, democracy in general

Pick any topic and any significant portion the population cannot have any significant sense of expertise about it.

It's why there are usually representative forms of government. And really, it's why we have parties. We vote for and support people with a certain sense of "trust". Not in a "I trust my friend" sense, but in a "people like that tend to vote this way".

It's why the whole campaign funding thing is so toxic. Because at the end of the day the reality is that you can't really "trust" elected officials. They become the "Senator from Aetna" in the end and one doesn't really find out often until it is way to late to do anything.

[Scuba]

2. Hmmm. I wonder where Rand Paul stands on labeling GMO's.

[phantom power]

3. I'm sure he think that is more unnecessary nanny-state invasion...

If consumers care about knowing what's in their products, they can travel to all the factories and investigate it themselves. You know, in the couple hours of spare time we all have each day, with all that extra travel money we all have laying around.

[Scuba]

4. We could all just hire food tasters, like paranoid kings.

[Dash87]

5. Ayn Rand did not understand humanity.

I like the Bioshock series because it is, in itself, a statement on why Libertarianism doesn't work.

The story goes that a man named Andrew Ryan built a city at the bottom of the ocean that was meant to be a Libertarian paradise. Only the most intelligent and gifted were allowed in. The idea was that the city would be an epicenter the scientific and artistically-minded.

The problem was that, the superior people in the libertarian paradise felt that menial tasks were below them, so servants were brought in. These servants were second class citizens, and became resentful. With that, revolution began, and the city became a hellish war zone.

Libertarianism requires a perfect world to work. It's another utopian pipe dream that ultimately always fails. In the case of Andrew Ryan's Rapture, a snobbish upperclass pushed an abused underclass to revolt. If there is nothing to level the playing field in society, resentment leads to anger which leads to war.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. This gets posted at DU regularly ... my turn this time ...

[phantom power]

7. that never gets old