legionnaire

Well, once again, here I am procrastinating on my grant application. I don't know why I can't force myself to just finish the damned thing (it's like 99% done) but whatever.

Since today has been a fairly dull day for me (got up, took the subway to the lab, have been here ever since.) I figured I'd run off on an intellectual tangent and see where it ends up.

Anyway, a thread in the current events section got me thinking about the rights of the individual vs. the need for a cohesive society. At one end of the extreme we have the hardcore libertarian perspective - government should collect taxes and enforce contracts, and little else. The individual's own rights are paramount, and take precedence over an other concern. At the other end - we have the Stalinist model where the individual is meaningless - only a small cog in the larger machine that is society, subject to the government's whims, and individual rights and liberties come and go depending on the context.

I think most people (including me) would agree that both of these models are inherently bad ways of doing things. The Stalinist system fails because it requires a supreme, authoritarian regime that permeates all aspects of existence. Also, most people would agree that minimizing individual liberties is bad - it takes away any choice an individual has in determining his or her own destiny, and, as individuals, we can see why this isn't good.

However, I would argue that the libertarian system fails as well, on another level completely. I understand that there are certainly people (some of whom are represented here at SG) who take immediate issue with that. For some strange reason, lots of those people are from California, particularly the South Bay and San Diego, like to really push for gun rights, love citing Ayn Rand and the Cato institute, belong to the EFF and think the DMCA came directly from the mouth of Satan. While I do find myself occasionally in agreement with these folks (I hate the DMCA as well,) I'm also pretty glad that I don't live in California any more. It seems like those people never came this far East.

Libertarianism fails because it eliminates the ability for people to work together. I think there's some grain of truth to the idea that we have to sacrifice some portion of our civil liberties in order to work together. Think about the boards and journals here at SG - we have pretty much unlimited freedom of speech, the only restriction that we've all agreed upon is that we can't offend the SG's. What we get in return for that small concession (besides nice pictures) is an interesting community that brings all sorts of different people together. Similarly, employees at a construction company building a skyscraper have to temporarily suspend their ability to do whatever they want, whenever they want to. They have to agree to follow a given plan that was imposed on them, even if they don't necessarily think that it's the greatest plan. In return, they get paid, and they've helped to build something larger and more majestic than anything any one of them could ever have done by themselves.

That's why I think a strictly libertarian philosophy fails - it's only through cooperation that we, as people, can ever accomplish anything of significance together. And if cooperation depends on our willingness to, at least temporarily, suspend some portion of liberties to work towards a larger goal, then we have to evaluate what the product of that cooperation will be. If it's worthwhile, we should do it. If not, then keep our liberties and move on to something more worthwhile.

So, as in almost any discussion, the answer probably lies somewhere in the middle. I think this discussion (more of a monologue, actually) is relevant to several hot-button issues, particularly gun rights and free speech. But I've rambled long enough. Anyone else have any thoughts?