{"id":89404,"date":"2024-05-31T04:00:47","date_gmt":"2024-05-31T08:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=89404"},"modified":"2024-05-30T12:17:06","modified_gmt":"2024-05-30T16:17:06","slug":"you-only-support-that-because-its-in-your-self-interest-to-do-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/05\/31\/you-only-support-that-because-its-in-your-self-interest-to-do-so\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;You only support that because it&#8217;s in your self-interest to do so&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.notonyourteam.co.uk\/p\/people-unlike-me\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Helen Dale<\/a> considers the painful notion that political ideas that work for the &#8220;elite&#8221; (defined in various ways) may not work at all for people unlike members of any given &#8220;elite&#8221;:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Luxury-beliefs-Rob-Henderson.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Luxury-beliefs-Rob-Henderson-480x315.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"315\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-89405\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Luxury-beliefs-Rob-Henderson-480x315.png 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Luxury-beliefs-Rob-Henderson-150x98.png 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/05\/Luxury-beliefs-Rob-Henderson.png 619w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When I reviewed Rob Henderson&#8217;s <em>Troubled<\/em> for <em>Law &#038; Liberty<\/em> at Liberty Fund, <a href=\"https:\/\/lawliberty.org\/book-review\/misery-loves-company\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">I made this observation<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>The reality that classical liberalism \u2014 the closest to my own political views, I admit \u2014 has at least a whiff of the luxury belief around <strong>it stings<\/strong>. It&#8217;s discomforting to acknowledge that what goes by the name of <strong>paternalism<\/strong> has its own intellectual pedigree, while liberalism can be a system developed by the clever, for the clever. &#8220;Highly educated and affluent people are more economically conservative and socially liberal,&#8221; Henderson says. &#8220;This doesn&#8217;t make sense. The position is roughly that people shouldn&#8217;t have to adhere to norms and if\/when they inevitably hurt themselves or others, then there should be no safety net available. It&#8217;s a luxury belief.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/open.substack.com\/users\/33049193-joseph-heath\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Joseph Heath<\/a> [&#8230;] uses the phrase &#8220;self-control aristocracy&#8221; to describe those who really do benefit from maximal freedom. <strong>These are people who can make better choices for themselves than any authority could make on their behalf<\/strong>. When the state or large corporates boss them (us) around, they (we) get really bloody annoyed. They (we) know better!<\/p>\n<p>Heath&#8217;s phrase is simply a layman&#8217;s term for the personality trait various formal tests measure, and which overlaps with executive function to a considerable but as yet unknown degree.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>Because I am self-conscious about my membership in the self-control aristocracy, I am acutely aware of the fact that, when I think about questions of &#8220;individual liberty&#8221; in society, I come to it with a particular set of class interests. That is because I stand to benefit much more from an expansion of the space of individual liberty than the average person does \u2013 because I have greater self-control. So I recognize that, while a 24-hour beer store would be great for me, it would be a mixed blessing for others [&#8230;]<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>What does this have to do with libertarianism? It is important because every academic proponent of libertarianism \u2013 understood loosely, as any doctrine that assigns individual liberty priority over other political values \u2013 is a member of the self-control aristocracy. As a result, they are advancing a political ideal that benefits themselves to a much greater extent than it benefits other people. In most cases, however, they do so naively, because they do not recognize themselves as members of an elite, socially-dominant group, that stands to benefit disproportionately. They think of liberty as something that creates an equal benefit for all.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>My response to reading Professor Heath&#8217;s piece was simplicity itself: <em>I feel seen<\/em>. I&#8217;ve even done the night school thing while working full-time. I&#8217;ve written books and chosen to play sports that require a long time and lots of skill to master. I retired at 45.<\/p>\n<p>Politically, I&#8217;m not a libertarian. Libertarianism is a distinctive and largely American ideology (as the <a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/campaign\/4687060-donald-trump-squeaky-chicken-libertarian-controversy\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">recent and bonkers fracas at its US Convention indicates<\/a>) with philosophically unusual deontological roots. I am, however, within the British and French tradition of classical liberalism (which does assign individual liberty priority over other political values). And like many classical liberals I&#8217;ve been blind to problems of laws and governance <em>for people unlike me<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>I disclose this because I&#8217;ve worked in policy development in both devolved and national parliaments. I&#8217;ve probably given politicians and civil servants alike dud advice. There is almost certainly a shit policy out there (in either Scotland or Australia) with my name on it. However, this mind-blindness doesn&#8217;t only apply to people who advocate libertarian politics. I think it applies to a significant number of political ideologies just as strongly as it does to libertarianism.<\/p>\n<p>That is, the ideology serves the inherited personality traits of those who promote it. &#8220;You only support that because it&#8217;s in your self-interest to do so&#8221; always struck me as a genuinely mean criticism of people who were involved in politics and policy (I may have been one of those people, natch). The problem \u2014 as I&#8217;ve been forced to accept \u2014 is that it&#8217;s true.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Helen Dale considers the painful notion that political ideas that work for the &#8220;elite&#8221; (defined in various ways) may not work at all for people unlike members of any given &#8220;elite&#8221;: When I reviewed Rob Henderson&#8217;s Troubled for Law &#038; Liberty at Liberty Fund, I made this observation: The reality that classical liberalism \u2014 the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,79,10,28,53],"tags":[1456,1129,550,1481,576],"class_list":["post-89404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-education","category-liberty","category-media","category-politics","tag-competence","tag-iq","tag-libertarianism","tag-luxurybeliefs","tag-philosophy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-ng0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89406,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89404\/revisions\/89406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}