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Old 09-25-2007, 12:22 PM
mosdef mosdef is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Toronto
Posts: 3,414
Default Re: Why I couldn’t accept ACism

[ QUOTE ]
the quality of life would extremely deteriorate for all (maybe not for less than 0.1% of population).

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I will pick at this one thing, which I think exposed the problem with your line of thinking.

There is no such thing as a universal measure of "quality of life". There is no objective formula you can apply to measure the quality of each individual's life, nor can you impose universally applied restrictions and limitations on the parameters of peoples' lives to "maximize" the hypothetical aggregate quality of life formula. The quality of a person's life can be measured only by the subjective evaluation of that life from the unique subjective evaluation "formula" of each individual. The question should not be "Are the lives or others sufficiently "good" based on my subjective analysis of their lives", the question should be "Who should evaluate an individual life, and what avenues do they have a right to pursue if they don't like the evaluation." The ACist will say that the only person with a right to perform the evaluation of a life is the individual himself, and the only legitimate avenues they have a right to pursue to change that evaluation are those involving mutually voluntary interactions with others.

Arguing about the relative outcomes of individual voluntary societies versus coercive collective societies is not the ultimate argument. The ultimate argument is whether or not you think your life should be evaluated by others and whether or not others can force you to change based on their valuations. The observation that many programs of forced change imposed on individuals are poorly conceived and have undesirable outcomes is a mark against coercive states, but it is not the blackest of marks. Before you even consider whether or not the outcome of a coercive state justifies it's existence, you have to engage the question of whether or not the coercion is a blatant act of evil in the first place. If you accept that it is evil, your refusal to accept the outcome is irrelevant.
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