I’ve seen some libertarians describe their ethic as, “Do what you will…but pay the price.”
Frankly, that is not a prescription at all. It simply describes consequences.
In ethical paganism, this would be considered incomplete, as the conclusion of the famous Wiccan Rede demonstrates:
“Where the rippling waters go, cast a stone, the truth you’ll know.
When you have and hold a need, harken not to others greed.With a fool no season spend, or be counted as his friend.
Merry Meet and Merry Part, bright the cheeks and warm the heart.Mind the Three-fold Laws you should, three times bad and three times good.
When misfortune is enow, wear the star upon your brow.Be true in love this you must do, unless your love is false to you.
These Eight words the Rede fulfill:
“An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will”
An Ye Harm None.
The simple omission of this phrase has tragic consequences for people’s understanding of ethical practice. Worse yet, they enter a path of solipsism, narcissism, and even criminality, under the delusion that they’ve discovered a new moral law.
Of course, what constitutes harm is debatable….
You have it right with your first assessment and then deny yourself. The Wiccan creed does not conclude that there’s any consequence if we harm, but Libertarianism does and so it is the opposite reasoning. “Do what you will…but pay the price.” is the effect of the cause the wiccans are missing. Libertarians are not missing the conclusion but the wiccans are.
Jason –
Not quite.
The so-called Libertarian creed (proclaimed by some who act as mouthpieces for all) is not an ethical creed if it says simply – pay the price…and that’s it.
Very often there is no price to be paid.
Are we to assume then that there is no other objection to, say, murder, besides the physical or psychological repercussions?
Of course not. Murder is wrong not because of the consequences but because the very act of murder is wrong. It is wrong, whether or not there is a price to be paid by the perp.
It is wrong because it does harm.
Which is exactly what the Wiccan creed states.
Do what you will and pay the consequences, IMO, is simply “might makes right” masquerading as advanced ethical thought.
The people who advance it are shallow thinkers and the people who accept it unquestioningly are blinded by the glamor of supposedly revolutionary thinking, which on closer examination is not revolutionary but simply meretricious.
In ethics, novelty is not usually a sign of progress.
I doubt that any libertarian has ever described their political philosophy that way, but if anyone did, they are rather ill-informed. I suggest looking up the “non-aggression principle,” which is similar in many respects to the Rede.
The philosophy of libertarians of the Ayn Randian variety is indeed ethically dubious to say the least, but even they would find the creed you quote (which I can’t find anywhere else, so I suspect you were paraphrasing it in pagan terms, hence the distortion) bizarre and poorly thought out.
Actually, I wasn’t paraphrasing it.
Doug Casey, who is quite well known as a libertarian, has frequently stated it in exactly those terms, and many libertarians in the financial community (The Daily Bell) have endorsed that statement too – they rephrase it as “caveat emptor”.
I went to some lengths to explain to them that caveat emptor had never allowed the use of fraudulent measures or certain clearly defined frauds and left the buyer to his own devices in finding that out by due diligence.
Secondly, Ayn Rand is heavily misunderstood. Her positions are far more ethical than they are given credit for. Randism is simply Nietzsche popularized and Nietzsche, with some caveats, was a kind of reworking of eastern philosophy. The later Nietzsche became a caricature of himself and went off in a bizarre direction, but that is not true of all Nietzsche.
For some reason, N concealed or didn’t fully acknowledge his sources or inspiration, but it’s pretty much apparent and confirmed by scholars.
The same goes for other continental philosophers like Heidegger.
I think it was a form of chauvinism, where Europeans didn’t want to acknowledge their borrowing from classical cultures that were not part of their own heritage.
So, yes, that phrase IS poorly thought out, but that is what popular libertarianism is in some circles.
You can read an extended thread on Caveat Emptor here:
http://thedailybell.com/bellFeedback.cfm?id=1899&bid=1&StartRow=41&PageNum=3
Rand explaining the force implicit in fraud: “A unilateral breach of contract involves an indirect use of physical force: it consists, in essence, of one man receiving the material values, goods or services of another, then refusing to pay for them and thus keeping them by force (by mere physical possession), not by right”i.e., keeping them without the consent of their owner.
Fraud involves a similarly indirect use of force: it consists of obtaining material values without their owner’s consent, under false pretenses or false promises.” [“The Nature of Government”, an essay in “The Virtue of Selfishness” p.111
You must be paraphrasing, as Casey has apparently not put those words in print anywhere, since I can’t find that particular wording anywhere else on the internet. Can you provide a reference?
I am somewhat familiar with Ayn Rand’s work, though I never read any of her fiction. Perhaps “ethically dubious” was a lazy way of putting it. There are a lot of ethical noises in her work, but I find Objectivism intellectually vapid and thus, indirectly, a potential source of harm.
As for “caveat emptor,” I suppose it could mean the same thing as “Do what you will… but pay the price” under certain circumstances, but I was interpreting the latter phrase in a different sense. I guess I’ll have to do some reading about what libertarians mean when they use the former (I did read most of the discussion on the page you linked to).
Maybe they took it out from his writing after I pointed it out. I have a bit of history of that kind of game-playing. But it used to be there.
And it’s the premise of the kinds of arguments they make, in any case, whether it’s still there or not.
I saw it some time in 2009 if I recall right. Google won’t always pull everything up.
Objectivists (I’m not one) are different from Ayn Rand, principally, because they make her work a kind of gospel.
I like many things in Rand, but since I have some background in comparative religion, Nietzsche is more interesting…
People ruin writers by either deifying them or demonizing them. It’s a real sign of stupidity.
March 2009: (in this version, there’s a qualification added, but the previous time I read him using it, he didn’t have the qualification. I don’t think I’m mistaken on that memory either). Could have added it, or maybe this isn’t the exact instance, but that’s the phrase:
“While it’s true the most basic law is “Do as thou wilt – but be prepared to accept the consequences,” you can extrapolate that out, as a practical matter, to two others. One, do all you say you’re going to do. And two, don’t aggress against other people or their property. Everybody understands those laws, and you don’t need a corrupt, and corrupting, government to elaborate on them any further, as far as I’m concerned.”