Spinoza, who – like Nietzsche – denied universal morality, came closest to defining morality (or at least a meta-morality). He explained that that which we subjectively think of as good or virtuous is always identified with our own personal freedom; anything which impairs our personal freedom we will always define as bad, wrong or even “evil”.

Unlike Nietzsche, however, his view was objective, holistic even. The theory goes, that if you understand that others do exist and they think in much the same way as you, you will also understand that you are unlikely to achieve much in the long run through deceit and coercion; if you are known to be an obstructor of the actions of others they will deem you “bad” and avoid or obstruct you in return; there are more of them than you, so in the absence of a suitably evil established system to back you up, you’ll get your come-uppance. Real world evidence can show that other people are like you, even if you just think they are figments of your imagination; and if you don’t treat them with respect no amount of solipsism will save you from their wrath.

If you as an individual, understand the causal chain well enough, then you will realise that your best chance at freedom is to respect the freedom of others. “Do unto others…”. Those who haven’t quite worked this out, or who are not gifted with the requisite self-control to understand and respect others’ freedom will suffer for it.

Since the the individual good is to everyone maximum freedom (even though they want the freedom to do different things), the “common good” is achieved by the same. If you respect others’ freedom as your own, you are working towards the common good. In the absence of concentrated coercive power(s), this should hold true. Spinoza also believed that his system was compatible with the major tenets of religion, although very much NOT with the teachings of the average religionist.

There is a flaw in this of course. Someone like Nietzsche’s Ubermensch ought to understand where the contingencies of his freedom lie, and act accordingly; but unless the overwhelming majority have come to the same understanding then things are likely to get a little out of control. For this reason, and despite coming to effectively the same kind of non-aggression principle as Rothbard and other political libertarians, Spinoza’s political writings were minarchist rather than anarchist, and far from perfect.

Still now there’s no comprehensive consensus amongst libertarians on how to maximise our personal freedoms, but it’s probably fair to say that attempting to agree on “absolutes” will not succeed.

Never mind eh?

There’s this market, see, where traders trade with one another. There’s high risk/high reward trades and low risk/low reward trades, and occasionaly a trader loses his shirt.

Then one day a lot of traders lose their shirts, and the press creates a big fooferaw about the number of shirtless people wandering around outside the market.

The gubmint decides this is a good issue on which to impress the people with its caring policies and intervenes to protect the shirtless.

Bye bye free market.

Immediately, anyone who’s anyone in the trading business hires loads of lawyers to get round the laws and loads of lobbyists to get the laws changed and loads of politicians to write new laws in their favor.

It’s that first step that kills it.

On political apathy, perhaps when people can elect. (or rather eject) EU commissioners and the EU president they will be less apathetic. Perhaps when they can vote to stop taxpayer funding of NGOs, fake charites and tame political lobbyists they will regain a measure of control over their fates.

On ‘The Perfectability of Mankind’ fallacy. Well this one rears it’s ugly, rotten, filthy head with depressing regularity and when any particukar version of it it gains traction within a society the consequences are always catastrophic.

But I rather felt that Sandel probably always thought that way about capitalism, however it was performing. No sooner than stock markets crash, and banks go bust, that socialists announce the death of capitalism.

But I’m reminded of what John Kenneth Galbraith said 10 or 15 years ago, which was that people should learn to expect regular stock market crashes every 10 years or so, and regard them as normal. Clearly neither Sandel nor Bunting paid any attention to Galbraith. Yet I suspect that Galbraith may well have been quite right.

O_O If that’s your idea of indolence…

Top stuff BG. My personal critique of Bunty’s loony diatribe got no further than “Adam Smith wept”.