OK, so I promise to return and then go off for more than a month without posting. Forgive me, for I have been very very busy. In fact, I still am. But I shall still make an attempt to restart blogging.
For those who need to be reminded, I had promised to answer interesting questions, something like three months back and then got very very busy. When I broke off, I was due to answer this question by Gaurav (not Sabnis).
1) What is libertarian position on incest? What is yours?
2) (Supplementary) What is libertarian position on social taboos? What is yours? To be specific, are they just smokesscreen for good old power play or do they provide some sort of equilibriumPS. Forget inbreeding for 1), I am not concerned with propogation of species at this instant.
I had actually drafted a response before I grew dissatisfied with it. So I will be starting fresh. In the meantime, let me hear your thoughts.
By “your thoughts” I presume you open the field to a non-libertarian standpoint.
I suppose you know my views on this, but I’ll articulate them for the benefit of others. Social taboos and societal restrictions seem to shape ones utility functions via coercion. But, all said and done, these coercions are “soft” in the sense that a. one is not prevented from committing them b. one cannot be physically harmed or restricted for committing them.
My take is that these are essential because humans are engineered through countervailing coercive forces of the hunter gatherer period and beyond, and our force of intellect is not strong enough to counter these contradictory instincts.
It is interesting to look at the situation when these taboos become “hard” constraints in the form of law. I’d reject this for the simple reason that any hard constraint on human nature should imply one could account for all downstream effects: something for which we do not have a sufficient handle over human nature for.
Of course, one could argue that laws do not necessarily provide the immutably hard constraints that are dangerous, nor that societal constraints are necessarily “soft”, for which I can shrug my shoulders.
I did not understand why you’re taking time to formulate a libertarian response since it does not need to bother with any of the above human nature complexities: all it merrily needs to do is look at its single defining axiom of liberty to the individual human to act out his utility functions.
Thus the libertarian standpoint should be: freedom to people (and society) to punish (by lawful means) those who violate social tabboos; freedom to people to violate social taboos.
Note that this chimes in with most of what I said above anyway, so I have no grudges with it other than the intellectual vacuousness of its position.
Ravi,
I thought you would never answer.
STS,
I assume by last paragraph you intend social censure.
Fair enough, my question was is there any valid reason for social taboos at all.
I can understand if there is a taboo for cannabalism, but I am intrigued how the concept of endogamy and exogamy evolved.
Regards
PS I was reading Robert Heinlein at that time.