Matthew Allen Miller's blog

It isn’t controversial to point out that we face serious public health problems: while modern medicine is helping us live longer, more years of our longer lives are spent fatter and sicker. Some of the biggest problems, obviously, are the related illnesses of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.

In my last post, I was trying to get an idea of what exactly is meant when someone says that he or she is an anarchist. Part of what I tried to do was map out some of the logical space of the different positions one might take regarding the state. Each possible view, I suggested, consists (for the most part) of where one's moral views about the state intersects with his or her views about the feasibility of statelessness. I was less explicit about this and I think I ended up with a pretty incomplete taxonomy of positions. I'd like to improve on that last post and give it another go by giving a more complete list of both the positions one can take on the morality of the state and of the positions one can take on the feasibility of statelessness. I'll have some more comments on this new taxonomy below. 

Some of the writers (and presumably some of the readers) of this blog claim to be anarchists, in some sense or another. I would like to emphasize this "some sense or another," and discuss (as well as inquire into) what is meant when someone identifies his or her self as an anarchist. I'm not looking for such distinctions as those between anarcho-capitalism (or market anarchism), anarcho-socialism, and whatever other "brands" of anarchy to which one might subscribe. What I'm concerned with here are the positions one might take which are composed of one's views on the moral status of the state and the practical feasibility of a stateless society. Some views which might reasonably be considered as anarchist are the following combinations:

According to NPR, this guy William Galston of the Brookings Institute thinks compulsory voting is a good idea. (HT to the LRC Blog)

He says that "it's good for democracy." 

Well, I say that it's also good for totalitarianism. And it's immoral. 

Here's the theory:

"Galston believes that the 'participation of less ideologically committed voters' would lead to depolarization.  He concedes that while 'passionate partisanship infuses the system with energy,' the U.S. electorate is as polarized as it was back in the 1890s, which 'erects roadblocks to problem-solving.' And while many 'committed partisans prefer gridlock to compromise,' gridlock is 'no formula for effective governance.'"

I have a few problems with Galston's theory.

I recently voiced (via facebook) my skepticism about boycotts, due to the fact that the victim of them is often the poor innocent worker. From what I gather, this could especially be true in the case of the Arizona boycott that seems to be so hot right now. The boycott will hardly affect the politicians who passed the law, but rather will hurt poor Hispanic workers, for example, in the food and hotel businesses. Aren't these precisely the people that boycotters presumably care about?

Ok, so Dr. Rand Paul's interview on Rachel Maddow seems to be a pretty hot topic this morning, according to facebook, at least. I thought I'd give my $.02 n the matter:

First of all, Dr. Paul's set of beliefs seem to be the following:

(1) He morally opposes ("abhors") any form of racism and discrimination.

(2) He opposes any racist or discriminatory practices of tax-funded state institutions, and supports legislation against such practices. 

(3) He supports the legal right of private business owners to engage in non-violent but racist or discriminatory practices. This is the necessary implication of taking very seriously the right of private property and the freedoms of association and speech that go along with it.

I've been reading the book Elements of Justice by David Schmidtz. In it, he lays out a pluralistic theory of justice, according to which Justice is not reducible to one principle (like non-aggression or property-rights). Rather, Justice consists of four elements which relate to and constrain each other in dynamic ways. So far, I recommend (it was ranked one of the top ten pro-liberty books of the last decade by the Atlas Foundation).

Anyways, when discussing reciprocity, Schmidtz makes a couple nice points that have much broader implications that would do classical liberals (and their opponents) some good to take seriously. He quotes a case from philosopher Robert Nozick in which your neighbors institute a public address system without your wanting it:

I just got my copy of Mencken's Notes on Democracy in the mail yesterday; I thought it would make for some nice pleasure reading, which is something I'm not able to do much of these days. Anyways, a passage from the introduction struck me. It reads:

Click Here for Part 1

Nietzsche’s Standard of Value

In the Preface to his Genealogy, Nietzsche explains the standard of value for his critique of morality. He explains that his main concern in writing the book is to discover the “value of morality” (P: 5). What is needed, he says, is a “critique of moral values, for once the value of these values must itself be called into question” (P: 6). And the standard that he suggests is a kind of human flourishing. 

I recently wrote a paper titled "A Nietzschean Critique of the State" for a grad seminar on Nietzsche. I thought it would be worth sharing a somewhat modified and abridged version here. Since it's not a short paper, I'll post it in two parts: one today, and the next part within in the next week. I hope you find this worth reading, and I welcome feedback and criticism.