{"id":459,"date":"2006-06-21T21:00:02","date_gmt":"2006-06-21T15:30:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/?p=459"},"modified":"2006-06-21T14:30:27","modified_gmt":"2006-06-21T09:00:27","slug":"beyond-platitudes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/classic\/200606\/beyond-platitudes\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond platitudes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of course, the standard libertarian answer to this question<\/a> is, “If no non-consenting third party is harmed in the action, there is nothing wrong with it.” <\/p>\n

Right?<\/p>\n

Wrong! <\/p>\n

I know that many libertarians, including my fellow Cartelians say such a thing lazily, but the precise way of saying it is: “If no non-consenting third party is harmed by the action, then the Government has no business legislating against it<\/i>” <\/p>\n

But either way, I am sure Gaurav did not ask the question so that he could hear the standard libertarian answer. He must have known the standard answer because he explicitly clarified the question in a way so that the answer would be tough. He asked me to “Forget inbreeding”, i.e. he set up the question in such a way that the action of incest would cause no harm to anyone else, including to a newborn baby. So essentially, I can paraphrase his question as:<\/p>\n

I happen to think that incest is “yuck”. From the “yuck”, I intuitively feel that it is morally wrong. However, I cannot give a logical reason why I think that it is morally wrong, beyond that I feel “yuck” when I think of it. I am pretty sure you feel the same, and yet your principles prevent you from criminalizing the action. So I am curious how you will reconcile your principles with your intuitions. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is that a valid paraphrase of the question? If it is, here is my answer. <\/p>\n

I freely confess that incest makes me too go “yuck”. Let me also concede (for argument’s sake) that there is something morally wrong with the action, independent of the harm it causes by inbreeding. For that reason, let me assume that both I and Gaurav want to see less of it. Does that mean that there should be a law against it? <\/p>\n

Not really. Even if I drop my objection to laws against actions that do not hurt any non-consenting party, here is my next question: “Why do we need the law?” <\/p>\n

The taboo against incest seems to be one of the most deep-rooted in human society. Even if there were no law against it, there is an incredible amount of social pressure against it. Practically every child that grows up in any current society grows up with a feeling of “yuck” that will act as a barrier to his committing the act. So I think that it is safe to assume that millions of brothers and sisters aren’t quite waiting for the law to be repealed to jump to bed with each other. <\/p>\n

So given this fact, why is there a need for a law against incest? What purpose would it serve? Why waste enforcement resources and give the government more powers to stop the miniscule number of brothers and sisters who have sex with each other? <\/p>\n

Note that this argument is actually an inversion of what we instinctively feel. We instinctively feel that something that is utterly wrong and which practically everyone agrees is wrong should automatically be banned. That does not really follow. We should write laws to achieve something, not to express our feelings. <\/p>\n

This last sentence, more than any platitudes about individual freedom and personal liberty, explains why I am a libertarian. <\/p>\n

This naturally brings up Gaurav’s next question, i.e. what do I think of Social taboos? What is the “correct” libertarian way to think of them? I will tackle that two posts down the line, because in the next post I want to ruminate on where the taboo on incest came from. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of course, the standard libertarian answer to this question is, “If no non-consenting third party is harmed in the action, there is nothing wrong with it.” Right? Wrong! I know that many libertarians, including my fellow Cartelians say such a thing lazily, but the precise way of saying it is: “If no non-consenting third party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ravikiran.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}