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by throwaway729 3453 days ago
> My question is not terribly complex or dependent on unusual or unrealistic situations.

No, usually the psychological arguments are needed to hand-wave away crucial but obvious problems.

> Well, that's a big weakness of these theories

No, it's not. It's perhaps their most important insight.

I mean, IMO they're wrong, but the insight about the need for a psychological aspect is important and correct.

Libertarians and especially anarcho-capitalists need similar psychological arguments (the fact that they often hand-wave over this need not-withstanding).

1 comments

Let me clarify: I'm saying that the "well, your objections are just psychological" aspect is the weakness. Sure, to have a psychological theory is fine, but too often it drifts into essentially "objections to our theory are merely based in the same psychological malformation that is produced by the current system - therefore when we get rid of the system, the objections will go away too". This is a weakness, I think.
Ah, I see. Yes, I agree with you on that.

Except maybe there's a system for which that's really true, and you and I prevent us from ever getting to that system because we reject arguments like this on the basis of form? Oh dear ;-)