[rayiner]

Ideally, governments just enforce the collective will of the public. What can override that? For example, you cite this “principle of full bodily autonomy.” Is that a thing that exists? What’s your proof for it. It sounds like some religious concept, except for libertarians.

[advael]

Proof? So you're telling me you don't understand what a "principle" is basically. I define autonomy exactly how I said it. Adults should be able to do with their own bodies as they see fit, including consenting to any and every act done with another consenting adult. I say adults here because I do believe carving out some small exceptions for people who aren't fully able to take care of themselves is necessary, but I also think minors should have way more rights than most governments give them, just not all of those we afford adults

The entire concept of "human rights" is premised on the idea that there are some principles that should override "the will of the people", which without any kind of protections of rights amounts to simple mob rule. I don't think you should get to lynch someone because the whole village doesn't like them, and I don't think the government should get to tell you what to do in the bedroom or what drugs you can take, regardless of what you can get a howling mob to think. I swear they don't teach people basic ethics these days. Or maybe it's just tech people? No wonder this industry's a garbage fire right now

[rayiner]

But who cares about your principles? Why should your non-falsifiable, non-scientific, non-empirical assertions about the nature of reality matter more than those of the mob?

You're just articulating a quasi-religious belief, and appointing ourself as the clergy of this quasi-religion, without admitting that's what you're doing.

[advael]

Cool analogy didja learn it in middle school english?

Seems everyone and their grandma wants to hold the torch of "rationality" and declare anyone who has an actual belief about something "dogmatic." It's intellectually facile and morally bankrupt

But no, fool, the principle of autonomy, or in this context that "the state shouldn't make decisions about what individuals can do to and using their own bodies" is not an arbitrary moral position, it's a meta-norm that has deep mechanism design implications in a functioning cosmopolitan society, ones that the balance of evidence suggest make that society work better for everyone except for the very lucky tiny percent of authoritarian busybodies that win the inevitable holy wars that come of structuring society around the premise that a state should be able to micromanage your individual life. I say that we have not achieved a state that truly doesn't meddle in this way (and one that are closest have in some senses backslid in the last century or so), but every move in that direction has produced both stability and prosperity

The very mindset you're espousing, that no one person's morals should determine the law, is a derived principle of enlightenment liberality. It's exactly why populism can't create a stable functioning human society

Liberality and consensual autonomy isn't a charter for total nihilist moral relativism and it doesn't call for every decision to be made by pure mob rule, it calls for government to act as a superstructure to allow democracy without lynchings and pogroms against political dissenters and laws against sex you don't like. It's a technology, not a religion

Moral nihilism doesn't imply that you're wise, it implies that you're spineless

[rayiner]

> every move in that direction has produced both stability and prosperity

Theatrics aside, it seems like you’re saying that the basis of your “principle” is empirical effectiveness. That is of course a reasonable secular basis for lawmaking. But that confronts two problems:

1) That still doesn’t give you a justification for overriding the democratic will. Empirical effectiveness is evidence that you might submit to the public about what policies would be beneficial. That doesn’t transform it into some “meta-norm” that by its own force overrides democratic law.

We have tremendous evidence that market economies are better than planned economies. But only kooky right-wingers think that makes capitalism a “meta-norm” that must override the popular will!

2) Your historical analysis falls short. China’s rise shows you can become rich and prosperous without embracing bodily autonomy as a principle. Even moral regulation of individuals in the west was quite stringent during the period when the west was getting rich—moreso than societies that were less regimented but didn’t get rich. Victorian England, for example, was a high water mark.

Moreover, the societies that have gone the furthest in embracing notions of bodily autonomy are uniformly on the path to extinction. Western Europe is slowly being replaced by Muslims from cultures that reject such notions.

[advael]

I mean actually nearly any resistance to an extremely oligarchy-friendly neoliberal idea of "free markets" is considered a fringe extremist position in at least the US and the UK, both in terms of the attitude of the culture at large and the levers of power available to anyone, so you must be in quite the left-wing bubble to believe that this is viewed as "kooky" by society at large. I agree with you that for most purposes meta-norms that create free markets (Which in many cases flows completely logically from a meta-norm of autonomy) are better for human flourishing than planned economies, including both cartel-planned ones and government-planned ones, with a few exceptions for things considered infrastructure where the incentives of a market are an ill fit to create guarantees of stability over long timescales. If you live in a western democracy, the vast overwhelming majority of people agree with that. I point out cartel-driven cronyism specifically because I would argue that most rich economies are not operating as free markets, but are essentially using the government as an enforcement arm of the power of incumbent players in many industries. I think that as compared to when this was less true, many of the societies underlying those economies are going into a bit of a tailspin, and that moving more toward free markets would actually do quite a bit to stop the bleeding and maybe turn it around. However, in term of pathos, "free trade" is still so popular that the kleptocrats who benefit from the capture of governmental institutions by industry constantly claim that is what they are doing to anyone who will listen, and the extant fringe of support for communism seeing a very slight uptick in recent years can be mostly explained as a backlash to these obvious lies told by those in power. Often backlashes are quite reactionary, and also water is wet

This absolutely delusional view of popular opinion and government priorities - along with the Great Replacement conspiracy nonsense - has led me to conclude that your preoccupation with the accusation that "people who merely believe in free markets" are right wing kooks might have more to do with your own being objectively and obviously a right-wing kook living in a fantasy world than it has to do with any reality about the general public's attitudes and beliefs in aggregate. Of course if you're one step from joining the next great wave of populist fascisms you think everyone's a tankie. Anyway, I think it's pointless to try to talk sense into someone who believes that anything remotely resembling "muslims taking over" is a serious existential threat to like, all of NATO? or whatever counts as "Western" this week, (Or for that matter, somehow an existential threat to white people as a whole worldwide, which seems to be what you lot tend to actually mean by that euphemism). There is a real war going on in Europe that has nothing to do with muslims, and you idiots worry about a slight uptick in brown people immigrating because some charismatic suits told you to. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic. I'll leave you to your frothing madness

[rayiner]

Dude, can you turn down the edge-lord a bit? I’m just trying to have a conversation. We don’t have perfectly free markets in the west precisely because most of the public, including in the US, and UK, believes in some sort of regulated neoliberalism. But that’s a policy choice—it doesn’t support your notion that an empirically-based principle can override democratic will. Many european countries in fact experimented with greater degrees of socialism in the 1960s and 1970s, and moved back towards market economies. But all that happened democratically. Capitalism is a policy tool subject to the popular will, not a religious mandate (like how you treat the principle of bodily autonomy).

As to Muslim migration to Europe: I’m not invoking any “Great Replacement conspiracy.” Quite the opposite. I’m from a Muslim country, and I've come to believe that our rejection of individual autonomy is empirically superior to European embrace of that concept (at least to the extreme it has been taken in post-Christian Europe). The notion of individual autonomy has made their societies literally unsustainable. Those countries must resort to importing population from Muslim countries in order to just to continue existing.

So to recap: “full bodily autonomy” is just a principle (frankly, it’s a cultural precept of European culture). And its empirical results are mixed. So why should such a principle override the popular will?

[CalChris]

> Ideally, governments just enforce the collective will of the public.

That rank populism is what Franklin warned us against and sounds suspiciously like a Leni Riefenstahl movie, except to libertarians.

[rayiner]

Franklin was religious and believed man was created by God and had an “immortal soul,” and that God created morality as well. https://www.americanheritage.com/benjamin-franklin-his-relig... (“I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him is doing good to his other Children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this.”). It follows from that thinking that there are limits on what the government can do to a God-created individual. God’s law trumps man’s law.

But what’s the argument that doesn’t resort to the supernatural? There’s a logical, utilitarian basis for saying that governments are created by societies to effectuate the popular will. There’s no God-favored king or clergy, and biology doesn’t anoint some humans to rule over others, as with say bees, so the popular will should be carried out. Insofar as the people have committed to things like constitutions and laws, of course, that can provide a principled basis for limiting what the government can do to individuals.

But OP was talking about some “principle of full bodily autonomy” that apparently transcends any specific constitution or law. Where does that come from? If the people don’t believe in any notion of “bodily autonomy”—or impose particular limits on that concept—what higher law can possibly override that?

[CalChris]

From Franklin's letter, more towards the end: "I have ever let others enjoy their religious Sentiments".

[rayiner]

The more relevant portion is this: “As to Jesus of Nazareth, my Opinion of whom you particularly desire, I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes, and I have, with most of the present Dissenters in England, some Doubts as to his Divinity; tho’ it is a question I do not dogmatize upon, having never studied it, and think it needless to busy myself with it now, when I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.”

You invoked Franklin’s statements about “populism.” But Franklin thought that humans were made by God and that God-created law was a real thing that existed. Under that world view, it makes sense that a democratic society couldn’t decide to say legalize the murder of rich people, because God’s law was higher than man’s law. But presumably we are not having a theological discussion here. If we don’t accept the notion of divine law, how can there be limits on what democratic governments can do with the consent of the people? The people’s law should be the highest law, right?

[CalChris]

No, the relevant portion of the letter was when Franklin eloquently added that he didn't want to apply his private religiosity to others. Nor as a Framer, did he.

I do not accept your divine law drivel nor do I accept your people's law either/or. Instead, I would counsel you to re-read and meditate on the Preamble to the Constitution, especially that part where it says in Order to form a more perfect Union. That part, the Enlightenment part.

[rayiner]

> I do not accept your divine law drivel

But that's exactly my argument! Franklin's beliefs about "populism" are based on "divine law drivel"--God's law imposes limits on democratic law. If we reject that--which is exactly what I'm trying to do here--what basis do you have for saying that the people can't make whatever laws they want?

You're the one invoking supernatural concepts--this supernatural notion of "bodily autonomy"--not me.