What does mises.org think about privilege in its sociological sense? Do you believe your belonging to a certain sex, race or class has given you advantages that members of other sexes, races or classes have not enjoyed?
If so, how do you expect to fix this in a "voluntarist" way?
What exactly is it that we are talking about "fixing"?
The market is the greatest institution for increasing the quality of life for the greatest number of people. and the state is the greatest institution for setting up and reinforcing patterns of privilege. So libertarians, even if they don't really care about such things, are already doing the right thing by promoting the former and denouncing the latter.
Now, I think libertarians (or anyone really) should be concerned about the well being of other humans, and that entails identifying and opposing the cultural institutions which also reinforce patterns of privilege and opression, even when such institutions aren't aggressive. As far as doing so in a "voluntarist way," the most obvious path is education, and also things like boycotts.
they said we would have an unfair fun advantage
Privileges are different from benefits. Seeing as voluntaryists are against state privilege, we would like to see it fixed by ending state privileges. Benefits per se are not problematic to the voluntaryist as a voluntaryist.
What does mises.org think about privilege in its sociological sense? Do you believe your belonging to a certain sex, race or class has given you advantages that members of other sexes, races or classes have not enjoyed? If so, how do you expect to fix this in a "voluntarist" way?
Some privileges come from Nature and are entailed by the very essence of what it means to be this or that. For example, a tall person can reach the top shelf without a ladder. A short person can do better at playing limbo. And so on. As Rothbard argues in Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, we should not wish to or try to correct these variations (beyond the extent that individuals themselves are able and choose to alter their own lot).
Other privileges arise as a result of coercion. These are the privileges that come from "law", that is, statutory edicts. They are nothing more than codified bullying, that is, they are bullying and intimidation dressed up in the robes of "law". The privileges enjoyed by those in the masses that happen to have a feature favored by statute (such as being a certain age, race or gender) are actually very tenuous. They are just scraps thrown from the table of the ruling Elites (the substantial beneficiaries of legal privilege) in order to buy the loyalty of special interest groups and keep the system rolling along.
There is a small overlap between natural privilege and legal privilege. For example, parents by virtue of their nature have certain privileges with respect to their young children (e.g. coercive application of medical procedures). This is why the idea of "a society built on NAP" doesn't make any sense. NAP is a very good first-approximation of justice in any particular scenario but - in the final analysis - law is a discipline that is unboundedly complex and no simple slogan or motto can even begin to encapsulate that complexity.
The way to fix our system of ugly legal privileges is to fix our bad morals because law is rooted in morality. A morally corrupted society will tolerate and even embrace corrupt laws. In a society without these basic moral errors, it becomes more difficult to convince people to accept morally corrupt measures. And one of the keys to moral reformation is privatization and localization of decision-making. The more we collectivize decision-making (larger and larger-scale democracy), the less anyone cares about making good decisions (being moral). Hence, reducing the territorial and population scale of governments is a crucial step to dismantling the entire system.
Clayton -
^
Fixing implies something is broken and requires it.
As usual, I find myself in agreement with Clayton.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
AE just explains that people, regardless of background will tend to be treated based upon aptitude on the market, rather than due to other factors about them. In non-market areas of society we can say no such thing. In our society you see different treatment based upon all sorts of things, not just race and gender but also based upon attractiveness, the way your voice sounds, natural parts of your personality.
The problem, and possibly the only useful thing to come out of doctrines like modern feminism, is ultimately that no one can ever escape the times in which they live. You cannot judge someone purely upon their own own merit because there is nothing pure there to judge; there can only be an interpretation of events. This is because nothing can be judged in a normative or positive sense without a preceding positive interpretation of events. Finally your interpretation of events necessitates your own understanding of how the world works and this in turn ultimately depends upon the world and times in which you live.
As for how voluntaryism would solve it; the answer to this question if flaky. Some people like the fact that there is this discrimination. It ultimately isn't obvious that women shouldn't be in the kitchen and blacks should be treated fairly. With this said economic conditions will tend to equalize income based upon aptitude and it will likely bring people together on the basis of voluntary trade. The ideas of equality have also had a very strong historical case, so there's a lot of hope there.
We really should not allow professional athletes to play at all, seeing as they have an unfair advantage of athletic DNA.
All actors and musicians should have to perform blindfolded, mouths stuffed up, and with earplugs, to fix the fact that they can act and sing and play instruments so much better than we can.
The A students should be kicked out of school altogether, since they are unfairly smarter than everyone else.
Obama and all senators and politicians should be impeached, since they obviously are superior to us in some way, which got them elected.
I saw a short science fiction story about this very theme. Arthur C. Clarke, maybe? Anyone know what I'm referring to?
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It's easy to refute an argument if you first misrepresent it. William Keizer
I think that OP's point is that some of the ways people are treated differently doesn't necessarily depend upon individual attributes. Black Arthur C. Clarke is discouraged so he never writes anything. Not necessarily agreeing, just saying.
@Dave: Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron.
You are looking at it from the wrong perspective in my opinion. Firstly I don't think I could speak for "mises.org" and i would not recommend phrasing questions that way in the future. I don't think there are any advantages due sex, race and class inherently i think it is more by happen-stance. It is because i am a white male of middle class upbringing that i experienced what I experienced. If i was of a different sex, race or class my experience would be different. But these circumstances are subject to change and there is no guaranteed result based on sex, race or class that can be calculated.
Females have been going to the same schools as males for a long time, I don't think there are any real advantages that are not actually a characteristic of the specific sex. ie males have a physical advantage. There are some external advantages but then you could argue that females have certain external advantages as well.
I do not think that race is of any external advantage but I think if any advantage can be found it is in physical advantages that are usually a result of the historic activity of the race. There can also be some hereditary advantages in the sense that well educated and successful people will be more likely to bring up an intelligent and successful child, compared to an impoverished parents. I am not making a genetic argument but one of association, by sharing the environment with the child and teaching the child. This is an advantage that some of the races have over other races. But it is not an all or nothing sort of scenario. I am just speaking generally. We can observe the same activity in with regards to the same race. Lawyers are more likely to bring up lawyers and than brick layers are likely to bring up lawyers. There is the history of institutionalised racism and if you consider the regional differences in the level of technological progression before the advent of mass transportation that enabled the mass immigration, which in turn enabled the multiculturalism societies that we live in today. So of course there is going to be differences between the different types of people from all around the world. I do not think that one can narrow the differences down to an exact science and say that X type of people or Y race have an advantage. There are some generalization that can be made but there are too many exceptions for there to be a rule.
There are advantages to being rich and that should go without saying, that is the incentive for everyone to become rich.
To answer your second question, probably/yes. I hang around around varieties of leftists when it comes to the idea of privilege (whether or not they politically align with the left), and I understand the arguments they put forth which are generally given very simplistic and "swept under the carpet" answers by libertarians. You can't have a cop out answer like the market when people can feel the most inequality and privilege (or lack of) on the market, this is where they bring up points. Thing is I can "acknowledge" or understand the idea of privilege and it's existence, but my answers are vary subjective that privilege is a social construct that takes influence from political and economic policies and discrepancies. Whether it be the state or the market or whatever else. I view privilege on a subjective basis that it's not concrete or universal, this is where I find a dividing line between myself and those who accept privilege as an objective fact because not everyone is privileged in the same aspect, I can turn the hierarchy on itself.
Does privilege exist in one way or another? Yes. Can it originate in or from the market? Yes. Is it natural (whether or not in all aspects)? Yes. Should it be addressed on cultural and sociological leves? Yes.
This is something that over time I've come to remove myself from as far as Rothbard and Rockwell's critique of culture (and why I feel they, like Mises, should have just stuck to what they were good at). vive pointed out in a previous thread that libertarians, in contrast to leftists, are seen as harsh and painted as right wing by leftists, mainly because we view the situation at hand outside of the box instead of inside of it, we can view it objectively and subjectively. I agree with this, and I can view it both ways, but there is a certain level where you can't simply answer it by saying the market will handle all inequalities by the state or something else, just as bringing up the NAP as an answer to everything.
Rothbard and Rockwell's critique of culture (and why I feel they, like Mises, should have just stuck to what they were good at).
Implying that their cultural critiques were not good?
I'm sure they were good when I read them, I've simply moved away from them.