The key being what constitutes being an asshole, and what you allow yourself to do to someone once the label can be pasted onto someone. It’s really the same thing seen through different gross stereotypes - they could literally say the same thing.
That’s not to say there aren’t very real differences between parties, but they aren’t extreme sides of a one dimensional line (or vague notions in a two dimensional mapping) which is basically a propaganda tool for the ego.
It’s funny. I have a blog post from Ken Arneson who talks about “The Right to be an Asshole” and here’s how he defines an asshole:
An asshole is a selfish person whose selfishness causes foreseeable indirect collateral damage to the people around them.
He goes on:
Assholes take risks that provide upside to themselves, but transfer the downsides of those risks to other people.
But the true test case for the limits of freedom is the asshole. Philosophically speaking, assholes walk the line between intentions and consequences. Assholes form the boundary between freedom and control.
Assholes don’t intend to do direct harm. They just don’t think about, and/or care about, and/or believe, and/or comprehend, that their actions can or will have negative consequences for other people beyond their direct intentions.
He goes on to recount the tale of COVID Patient 31 from Seoul, South Korea. Shortly after receiving her diagnosis, she decided to seek comfort at church. Hundreds of deaths and thousands of infections were traced back to her through contact tracing. So, now we come to intentions vs. consequences. Patient 31 wasn’t intending to make anyone sick or die, she was merely seeking comfort through faith. Any reasonable non-asshole could have told her and probably did tell her, that attending church while infected would cause others to be infected and possibly die. How should this asshole be judged? If we judge her by her intentions, then she’s as much a victim as anyone. But if we judge her by her consequences, then she’s a mass murderer.
So the question we have to ask as a free society is: What the fuck do we do about assholes?
Assholes have a very clever trick that allows them to keep being assholes.
If you try to stop them from being an asshole, they will declare you to be an asshole who, although perhaps intending to prevent some bad thing from happening, causes harm by denying some very fine people, who have no intention of harming anyone, their freedom. So who’s the real asshole here, anyway?
The key being what constitutes being an asshole, and what you allow yourself to do to someone once the label can be pasted onto someone. It’s really the same thing seen through different gross stereotypes - they could literally say the same thing.
That’s not to say there aren’t very real differences between parties, but they aren’t extreme sides of a one dimensional line (or vague notions in a two dimensional mapping) which is basically a propaganda tool for the ego.
It’s funny. I have a blog post from Ken Arneson who talks about “The Right to be an Asshole” and here’s how he defines an asshole:
He goes on:
He goes on to recount the tale of COVID Patient 31 from Seoul, South Korea. Shortly after receiving her diagnosis, she decided to seek comfort at church. Hundreds of deaths and thousands of infections were traced back to her through contact tracing. So, now we come to intentions vs. consequences. Patient 31 wasn’t intending to make anyone sick or die, she was merely seeking comfort through faith. Any reasonable non-asshole could have told her and probably did tell her, that attending church while infected would cause others to be infected and possibly die. How should this asshole be judged? If we judge her by her intentions, then she’s as much a victim as anyone. But if we judge her by her consequences, then she’s a mass murderer.
So the question we have to ask as a free society is: What the fuck do we do about assholes?
Assholes have a very clever trick that allows them to keep being assholes.
If you try to stop them from being an asshole, they will declare you to be an asshole who, although perhaps intending to prevent some bad thing from happening, causes harm by denying some very fine people, who have no intention of harming anyone, their freedom. So who’s the real asshole here, anyway?
Socialism is literally transferring all risk to other people. Nice try though.