"We should take our ignorance more seriously"
I just overheard this quote, I don’t know who said it, but I think it’s great.
There is a fallacy in the human mind: most people think they are above average in intelligence (or driving or sex) even though we know statistically this can’t be true.
Similarly everybody is ignorant on many topics. What’s funny is that people are still willing to have opinions and spout them with a high degree of certainty even though the extent of their knowledge is that they heard it on TV or in the pub.
Nobody is immune to this kind of thinking; it’s human, however if you aren’t making some effort to resolve contradictions and issues in your own mind, you will soon become comfortable, like 95% of the population is, with having conflicting opinions in your own mind, but not getting any closer to the truth.
With that in mind, here’s a few thought exercises for anybody who isn’t quite on the libertarian side of the fence yet:
- If the minimum wage is good thing because it makes sure employers don’t “exploit” workers then why don’t we increase it to £10 an hour?
- If printing and borrowing billions of pounds can jump start the economy why don’t they print and borrow twice as much to jump start it twice as well? If there is an optimal amount how do politicians arrive at it? If you don’t know, try to find out, if you can’t find a good answer, consider the logical conclusion to that fact.
- If we need government to restrain people with bad intentions what stops people with bad intentions simply joining the government?
- If we can’t turn over the NHS to private charity and the organisation simply must be funded through forced taxation because people aren’t good enough to pay for it voluntarily then how is our system a representative democracy and not a dictatorship?
- If we agree that the “Nuremberg defence” (the idea that the Nazi soldiers weren’t responsible for what they did because they were just following orders) is no defence at all, then why is it impossible for a police officer to decide on his own not to enforce certain laws due to his own code of ethics? If those who refuse to follow orders must quit the police force or be forced out by their superiors who will that leave to police our streets?
- If Marijuana, Cocaine and Heroin are illegal in almost every country across the world because they are potentially dangerous, why are cigarettes and alcohol legal across the entire world? Most people know this one but don’t have a reasonable answer to the why.
- If America could attack Iran in a “pre-emptive strike” because they may build a nuclear weapon and that is a morally acceptable idea, then would Iran be ethically justified in nuking the USA pre-emptively because of this threat?
- If I pre-emptively bomb my neighbour because I think he might be up to no good and accidentally blow up the house beside him killing 2 children and their parents I go to jail. If a solider does it it is called collateral damage. What is the difference? Just saying “it’s war” is a non answer. What makes it okay if it’s “war” and who specifically gets to decide what is and isn’t war? Why?
- Forcing employers to give all full time employees a minimum of 4 weeks paid holiday a year is arguably good for some employees. But which groups are hurt by such legislation? (Also: if 4 weeks is good, why not 6 weeks?)
- Government claims to represent us. Can anybody represent more than one person, if the people didn’t voluntarily enter into the agreement? Could you represent five of your friends on all issues or would they want different things? Could you represent 65 million?
[digg=http://digg.com/political_opinion/We_should_take_our_ignorance_more_seriously]Feel free to post your answers in the comments, if anybody wants to play :)
December 30th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Here’s one I’ve been dealing with:
If I accept the principles of self ownership and non aggression, why am I still a minarchist? Hmmmm….
December 30th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Haha, that’s a good one. I wrestled with it for ages. I think what finally swung it for me was being convinced that law and arbitration could arise spontaneously in a free society without requiring forced taxation or a monopoly on those services.
Also the thought that if government fucks up everything else it does, from healthcare to schools, from military campaigns to delivering the mail, why on earth would I want it to administer justice?
December 30th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Good points but surely you know the answer to most of the questions you have posed? For nearly all of them the answer is that the solution is not feasible and that to action would cause more long hastle that it’s worth. They would complicate things. Here’s one for you: If Christians are all going to heaven why don’t they all just kill themselves? I think the church realised this and made suicide a sin. Convenient.
I am probably missing a big point here which clearly demonstrates my own ignorance, but don’t most fairly intelligent people think about these kind of things anyway? I have spent hours, as I am sure have you, thinking about the wages people get and wondering if the minimum wages is enough or too much. I thought about it extensively before Labour brought it in and heard the counter arguments by the tories that it would bankrupt everyone in business. I considered their argument and now feel a minimum wages is a good thing and I guess it’s set at about the right level. Putting it to £10 an hour probably would mean a lot of people would go out of business or they would source illegal staff somehow or outsource overseas. Of course if you asked someone who works at Mc Donalds should they get £10 an hour they would say yes, but the fact is the people who make these decisions don’t ask them. I have also considered nearly all of the questions on your list in the past at some point, but I don’t think there’s anything special about me for doing this. I think most people that would read a site like this have formulated opinions on nearly every subject they have encountered based mainly on personal experiences and deeply held beliefs and prejudices, but also somewhat based on evidence and fact and an understanding of how things work and the consequences of actions.
Is your argument that it is somehow wrong to have an opinion when all of the evidence is not clear? If so then there is no point speculating about anything, even in the world of science which largely deals with discerning fact from fiction. Quantum electrodynamics theory for example has been proven without doubt and can be clearly understood in any book by the late Richard Feynman and yet a great many scientists that specialise in the field dispute it – that’s their prerogative and I am sure they know so much more about the subject that I every will do, and yet I think they are wrong based on a couple of books that I read when I was bored. Do I have the right to make that decision?
Even now, 40% of Americans do not believe that evolution happens, although this is proven and is a theory as strong as the theory of gravity, and yet some of the smartest people in the world are in this 40%. I think they are wrong, but by doing so am I saying somehow I’m smarter and more knowledgeable than the millions of people that hold that belief? Maybe there is evidence I am not aware of. Maybe their is a god. Who am I to know any better? Just because we have evidence that says something is right does not mean that we are right and it certainly does not mean that other people deemed ignorant by ourselves do not have the right to state their own opinions. Like time, wealth and happiness, truth is relative.
December 30th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
[...] that make you go “huh?” The UK Libertarian has put up a post of preconceived notion crushing questions. Being a libertarian too (albeit a [...]
December 30th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Thanks for the post Mr. H. Chilli ;)
I didn’t mean I’d literally made this post for you. Just that I’d written more about why I liked the quote at this URL. I’m sure you question lots of things. Most people do. And obviously everybody has opinions. The idea is that in the course of having your opinion you come upon something that you can’t answer or contradicts something else it probably means you need to think some more.
Re minimum wage. Some more questions for you. If employers will try to exploit workers and not pay them the a “decent wage” without the government forcing them, how come 95% of employers pay higher than minimum wage even though they don’t have to?
Next question: If you realise that people will go out of business if the minimum wage was raised to £10 an hour think about why this might be. Now ask yourself if the current minimum wage relates to unemployment and who unemployment hurts the most.
x
January 3rd, 2010 at 12:39 am
It’s worth bearing in mind that the minimum wage is pretty hard to enforce, and only really gets enforced when actual real exploitation happens. Even the businesses that don’t pay minimum wage pay something. I was paid around £4, but there’s no difference in law between paying that and paying me nothing. So even the employers that do not pay more (and as you point out, most do) are compelled by the market to pay something.
At risk of being a whore, I answered all of these on my blog, but then I wasn’t really on the fence in the first place. http://thorshammar.blogspot.com/2010/01/thinking-with-my-brain.html
January 3rd, 2010 at 1:59 am
At a small local business level you might be able to get away with paying below minimum wage, but large employers certainly won’t risk it. So it does destroy tons of jobs. I agree with you that the market will compel employers to pay people reasonable wages, but not just that, it will find the exact best possible price for labour to allocate it as near as perfect as as possible across all sectors. Magical.
Nice blog post, I threw in my $0.02 in the comments over there.
January 3rd, 2010 at 3:02 am
I appreciate the comments.
January 4th, 2010 at 12:30 pm
Yes I know you didn’t literally write this for me, I was saying thanks anyway as I found it interesting.
To answer your first question, I personally could pay the minimum wage to people. I could hire people from India, or in experienced students, but instead I pay for good staff and I pay them about 4 times the minimum wage, plus bonuses if a project goes well. I even pay one of my staff who is from India this same wage even though he actually asked for half the UK minimum wage. The reason is that in the long term you have happier staff and a lower turnover of said staff. You get what you pay for. Also I couldn’t live on £5 an hour, so on an ethical level I don’t think its fair that people that help make my business work should do either.
Secondly, raising the minimum wage would make the UK labour workforce uncompetitive, it would hurt the workers plus big business and the economy as a whole. Much of our manufacturing would move abroad where costs are cheaper and tax levels are lower(as it has been doing for the last 20 years anyway). Tax takings would drop massively which would have a knock on effect on all services including the national health and every other major thing we rely on and take for granted. Morale would plummet and homelessness would be on the rise. Crime would increase, and with it, the costs of crime. Chaos, quite literally.
January 4th, 2010 at 4:51 pm
I agree with everything you said. The Conclusion? We don’t need the government to force the minimum wage upon people because employers have a natural incentive to pay their workers a fair wage. However, in some cases, you cannot employ somebody for minimum wage but the person really wants to work, but, because of the law, the job is destroyed and the person on the margins (maybe somebody who left school without qualifications or skills, or a homeless person, or somebody with a drug problem, people with no reputation at the moment and a high risk for employers) has no chance to get their foot on the work ladder.
Let’s say I have a field, it has a small amount of gold in it. I work out that I can find £3 worth of gold per hour if I toil it. I decide my labour is better spent elsewhere, playing poker or something. However I realise that there are people in need of work. I offer the job up for £2.50 an hour to the marketplace and a bunch of people who desperately need work voluntarily come forward.
But oh no, the government, in its infinite wisdom, wants to get in between people making a voluntary arrangement, and declares I am exploiting the workers at that wage and cannot hire them. Clearly we can see that unless I hire them for less than £3 the job cannot exist, but that doesn’t matter to the government. They’re here to help, and taking things on a case by case basis isn’t in their repertoire.
And this isn’t just some made up scenario, there are tons of jobs that are literally destroyed by the minimum wage just like this. Jobs like standing with a sign in the street, running errands or 1000 others that we can’t imagine because they don’t exist. And who does this hurt? Yep, those most in need of work with the least marketable skills. Unintended consequences for the massive fail.
January 5th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Hmm…the problem with that is no one can really live on £2.50 per hour. Sure, pocket money for kids or something but then the inevitable exploitation begins. I used to have a £3 an hour job. It was bloody hard work and it was the only work I could get at the time asI lived 15 miles from anywhere and didn’t have a car. It deserved more than £3 per hour but the guy hiring me, who could easily have paid more knew it was the only job around for miles and I was forced to take it.I worked my arse off and at the end of the week I took home about £100.
The problem with not having a government enforce some rules is that people will always take advantage, it is in our genes, quite literally. Animals exploit any niche they can and so do we. If you had a field with £3 worth of gold per hour in it and would pay £2.50 per hour you wouldn’t actually make a profit because you need to pay tax contributions plus sick pay and paid holiday totalling about £3.50 per hour on my estimations. To make a profit of 50p per hour you would need to pay them about £1.50-£2.00. But why stop there? there’s a guy in the next field and he says he says his gold is only worth £2 per hour. Meanwhile there is a small family who cannot or do not want to claim benefits because they are proud who are forced into the position of working for 50p per hour. Just to make ends meet, the kids bunk off school. You can see see what would happen in the long term.
A minimum wage is such a small thing really. Its the smallest amount these rich politicians think someone can live on. The example you gave would only earn you about £20 a week profit and bear in mind that since you are hiring someone you would need to do your yearly accounts, so presumably you would need an accountant which means in the long run you would not make any profit at all. Now, if you had 100 people working for you then things would be different, and that’s where problems really begin.
I think a minimum wage is a good idea though because big companies do benefit from paying bugger all to their staff. You know about the sweat shops in Thailand and India, the children that make our clothes and put together our iphones and laptops. If their economy was in the position whereby they could enforce a minimum wage, as ours is, then their country would have a much higher standard of living, which in turn would increase tax takings something that believe it or not is better for everyone.
January 5th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
So you voluntarily chose to work at the wage this guy offered, but you think a better scenario was the job never existed and you didn’t even have the choice? Or you want the force of government to use its guns and force to MAKE the guy pay you a wage that you want? Then later in your comment you make out politicians are bad guys. They are bad guys, until they use their power for your benefit?
As we already established it doesn’t matter that people might inherently want to “take advantage” because working purely in their own self interest the market will discover a fair wage for a given job. Hence why 95% of employers ALREADY pay over minimum wage, despite having these terrible genes you speak of.
All the tax contributions and sick pay etc. are more government meddling in the market, you’re right. My example hypothesised a truly free market as an easy way to visualise how the minimum wage destroys jobs. You’re totally wrong that you cant’ live on £2.50 an hour. If you’re homeless, or sharing a room with 3 people or whatever you can live on that, it totally sucks, but if somebody chooses to take the job they obviously prefer that option to not working, or they wouldn’t do it. In the situation I gave it is ECONOMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE for him to raise the wage. Why would you want the homeless dude not to even have the option?
If countries like Thailand etc. Introduced a minimum wage it would be the most disastrous thing imaginable. All our companies would take our “sweatshops” out and relocate them either back in this country or in another country which didn’t have ludicrous minimum wage laws. And then what? Those poor people you care about would have just lost some of the most prized jobs in their areas.
For a country to become rich it must go through the same industrialisation that western countries went through. This process happens as rich countries invest capital in them. Thinking you can use government guns to simply manufacture wealth out of thin air is economically naive. What these poor countries need is freedom from regulation and government, not more economic controls.
Minimum wage is only a small thing if you are on the job ladder. To those unemployed the minimum wage destroys jobs and makes it hard to get your foot in the door. It’s true that most people get paid more anyway, but those who are the biggest risk to employers, like I mentioned earlier, are the ones who get most hurt by the regulation. Young people, people with criminal backgrounds, homeless, drug addicts, etc.
January 17th, 2010 at 1:44 am
Here’s one:
How much money does a business owner have to have before they stop becoming a poor, down-trodden, self employed victim of big business, and start becoming a rich capitalist fat cat?
January 17th, 2010 at 2:14 am
Or even better:
If hiding your property from a potential thief is common sense, how is tax evasion a crime?
January 17th, 2010 at 6:08 am
Nice additions! Almost warrants a published part 2!