Hate is Counterproductive

Classically Liberal made a very insightful post about hate.  It is particularly wise in that it includes people of his own (and thus my own) political stripe in its critical approach.  Hatred on the part of libertarians toward the state has the potential to be destructive.

I think that ideally libertarianism should be part of a wider ethical philosophy.  There should be a reason why you see the initiation of force or violation of property rights to be wrong.  It should be based on things that really exist.

For myself I believe that it is part of the principle that we should minimize the harm that we do to others and come up with principles that reduce the harm that we do to others.  There are some actions that both liberals and libertarians would acknowledge constitute initiation of force.  For instance attacks on an other's person.

There are certain others which harm others, but which we would have to allow. Such as using physical resources.  We believe that property rights are the best way of regulating the use of resources.  It is the only way of regulating this that relies on universal and general principles.  Note that the existence of property rights does not imply that the state has a right or obligation to enforce them.  It is simply a statement of the moral principle that to take something that belongs to someone else without permission is worthy of blame.  The same applies to the initiation of force, narrowly construed so as to accommodate both liberals and libertarians.

Now we must turn to the matter of the proper role of the state, or more broadly under what circumstances the use of coercion or violence is justified.  Basically, I would state that in order for it to be justified, social forces applied without it must be insufficient.  In order for coercion to be justified, it must be the case that total and complete ostracism would not suffice.  In as much as violence involves injuring another person, in order to justify it, it must be the case that coercion without inflicting injury would not suffice.

We blame people in order to prevent them from violent action and theft.  If we were to refuse to interact with these people, they would still be able to attack us and to rob us, so social forces alone will not suffice.

One of my main reasons for preferring social forces is that in order for them to be effective, other people must share my concern about the behavior in question.  My application of coercion or violence does not share this trait.  A single individual can benefit from applying a better standard, one that blames those who don't harm others less, or holds individuals accountable for actions that harm others in ways that most fail to see.

Just as libertarianism protects us against harming others when it is unwise to do so, we should also be reluctant to apply negative social forces to pursue goals that we can achieve with positive social forces.  That is we should never attempt to accomplish through blame what we can accomplish through praise.  Blaming people for failing to help others is an example of this.  It is also important that we not assign blame too widely.  If we blame people for doing things that are harmful to others in ways that most fail to see, then we are more likely to drive people away from us than to reform popular practices.  Instead we should gently explain the harm that is done and leave it at that.