The ethics of Idiocy (Life Boat Scenarios and Libertarianism)
EDIT 02 JULY 2012:
After Nielsio (who I really respect) disagreed with me on how useful a video like the one Stef posted really is, I encouraged him to put something out of his own and he’s done just that. This is an extremely thought provoking 1 hour discussion on the Topic of Life Boat Scenarios (with a few entertaining detours) without the moralising you get in Stef’s video. I still think Stef’s video is valuable but since I posted it several parts of it which are less than satisfactory have been pointed out to me and I would now suggest the following video to anybody who is genuinely interested in hearing a libertarian view on the matter. For those people who are behaving intellectually dishonest and don’t really care what you say then perhaps Stef’s video would at least give them back some of their own medicine, but in terms of learning in the spirit of calm logical, non-judgemental explanation, I prefer this new video:
ORIGINAL POST
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From now on this is the go video to link people to whenever they say things like:
“If we had your way what would happen if I broke my wrist and wasn’t insured?”
“Oh, sure, a country without war would be great but it’s not realistic. I mean I just don’t trust human nature. How could somebody who was broke possibly afford food? They’d STARVE!”
And all the permutations of this theme. Also, the “lifeboat scenarios” are covered in a way that seemed to my biased ears to be highly convincing.
I think this is the best talk I’ve heard that really crushes this common objection and I welcome discussion on it below and encourage everybody to start linking to this when these objections come up if you’re can’t be bothered to get into a big back and forth with the person you’re debating.
Molyneux has taken a short break from posting while he’s been out of the country doing speeches and in my view he’s returned with one of his best. Really powerful:







June 25th, 2012 at 7:03 pm
I could not disagree anymore, I had to stop listening after maybe ten minutes. The whole premise for your arguement seems to be that a) the society laws the individual is in are morally right to begin with. b) any material good has higher value than a human life c) people have time to do all those things and looking after a dying loved one who may or may not be dying in time frame to launch a media campaign to influence a drug store owner or drug producer.