Self-fulfilling assumptions

Additionally:

a. what may be necessary in order to produce a healthy economy may not be what is necessary to produce a healthy society, and indeed the two may differ significantly ;

b. in order to have a society that does not disintegrate it is necessary for a significant proportion of people to not behave selfishly and to propound the values of common interest ;

c. the more that the values of selfishness are extolled, the harder these people will have to work just to keep us afloat, while being despised by the advocates of selfishness as they do so.

I agree she’s wrong, but could you get her name right, please?

[Fixed. thanks CB]

It’s not a theoretical argument. Societies have been structured with the aim of encouraging solidarity. The results seem to vindicate those unenlightened economists.

Why do people take her seriously?

If individuals were straightforward maximizers of their own good then states would act in ways that reflect the self-interested action of the most powerful individuals within them rather than the (long term? short term?) interest of the state itself.

Which is…exactly what most people think happens. France defends agricultural subsidies to protect politically powerful farmers, not the larger class of consumers and the best interests of the nation as a whole. Chinese leaders adopt those policies that make their nation more powerful, thus enhancing their own sense of aggrandizement and the opportunities to enrich themselves and their cronies through corruption, but avoid any relaxing of the bad old days that would threaten them, be it ever so nice and good for the Chinese as a whole. And of course: “Bush is in the pocket of oil interests and started a war for oil.”

McArdle? Absurdly simplistic? … Every day, man.

So sorry Chris–we overlapped. Feel free to delete my comment. I hope you enjoy an exhilirating round of “The Libertarian Case for Torture” with The Atlantic’s newest blogger.

Comments policy posted where? I’d like to have a read–sorry to hear I’m in violation of it.

But this line makes no sense:

“if you think it’s a waste of time to argue with X, then it makes no sense to post critical comments about X”

What doesn’t make sense? If I think some abstract X is a dishonest light-weight, then I think it is a waste of intellectual bandwidth for *you* to be devoted blog-inches to X, and I post critical comments in order to dissuade you and others like you from encouraging X and giving X a larger platform from which to spout X’s inanities.

Nothing offensively personal in all that, I hope?

Chris, it is things like her torture post – or her “send old people out to sea on an iceberg” post – that disqualify her as a serious person worthy of commentary. She either does not reason things through or she is not honest; in either case her writing is a parade of fallacies.

Here is the first paragraph:

“One of the most facile dismissals of torture is that it doesn’t work, so why bother? That’s tempting, but it’s too easy. Torture seems to me very likely to work provided that you can verify the information, which I assume interrogators can in at least some circumstances. Nor is it obvious to me that the quality of information is likely to be lower than that obtained by other means: yes, people will say anything to avoid torture, but they’ll also say anything to avoid imprisonment. Maybe the lies will be vivider or more voluble under torture, but it doesn’t seem necessarily so that the ratio of lies to truth will increase.”

She then goes on to say that someone (not her!) could still argue that torture is wrong. But look at the above, please. It is assertion by argument. She thinks that torture could work exactly as effectively as it does in the movies, so based on her speculative beliefs the argument that it is unreliable is *falsified*. All of her posts have this sort of logic, which you note on the current subject. What’s the point? She’ll just breezily assert that she thinks X, which contradicts you, thus you’re wrong. Even if you’re saying the Sun rises in the east.

if you think it’s a waste of time to argue with X, then it makes no sense to post critical comments about X

When did this blog adopt THAT policy?

I agree with groo’s remarks.

McArdle’s at the same level as Instapundit. The point of criticizing her is to try to show just how debased the thinking of our “amateur libertarians” has become. (The Cato institute, home of professional libertarians, is actually far better).

Enlightened self-interest. Sigh….. such an ignored concept

The point made in another article soon after is quite accurate: if you bind yourself to certain rules, you become *trustworthy*. Being trusted is *EXTREMELY* valuable.

Acting in the interests of society can be in your own interests in the long run, and usually is, particularly if you’re one of the people who benefits from a stable society. The same applies internationally….

“Back when I was in business, it was assumed by some of our consultants that we’d prefer any immediate return to the owners over any long-term benefit to the company or its employees. It seemed to be a matter of faith with them.”

Pretty much sums up what’s wrong with American business, doesn’t it?

All excellent objections, Chris.

“…But almost all economists recognize that self-interest is a powerful force that must be dealt with, and therefore that economic policy must be designed on the assumption that people will try to maximize their own good, rather than society’s…”

is the quintessence of conservatism’s flawed and selfish assumptions. You can’t even define the maximization of personal good. To do so requires understanding and making explicit the web of interdependencies that locate and sustain any one of us rich or poor within society.

Groo: “I enjoy reading McArdle because her posts serve a useful function, namely telling me what a reasonable amatuer of libertarian persuasion might be thinking about an issue.”

No, the point of reading her is to get a nostalgia trip, reading a Republican-disguised-as-a-libertarian. If you want ‘ a reasonable amatuer of libertarian persuasion ‘, read Jim Henley’s blog (highclearing.com).

The reason that she’s put on the Atlantic blog is pretty clear, when you read people like Ross, and realize just how dumb and foolish they are. She’s another eager tool of the elites, with a slightly different flavor than Ross.

It isn’t a matter of reading comprehension

Apparently it is. Look, what she’s saying (in two paragraphs, but then again, you gotta fill that blank space in the internets) is “who cares about whether torture works or not? Even if it did, it would still be wrong.” That does not sound like a “torture enthusiast” – which you obviously assumed she was before you got through the first sentence.

And somehow you manage to get something completely different out of it. And it’s not like it’s written in some high falutin’, mangled grammar, post modernist cant that requires some serious head scratching and three years in grad school.

What freakin’ article are you reading?

Where does she dismiss some widely held and powerful argument against it? That it doesn’t work? She points out that the argument is irrelevant to whether torture is immoral or not!

Where does she call people who are against torture a bunch of cretins? Again, what freakin’ article are you reading?

Is there something in the comments I’m missing (I see that Lizardbreath makes some interesting points, but that’s a completely different line)?

Cuz seriously, I think you’re just projecting your own fantasies and delusions of what a “amateur libertarian” MUST be like to keep your fragile little ideological ego, er, id, secure.

You know I’ve just reread that article for like the 15th time trying to see where folks like you are coming from.

I got nothing else to say.

It pains me to find myself in agreement with notsneaky Radek, my mortal enemy. The weekend is ruined.

However, Radek, if you really do care where people you are arguing with “are coming from”, which seems very unlikely as on your past record your main purpose in commenting here seems to be to hurl abuse at people, here’s what McArdle says about the argument that torture is ineffective:

One of the most facile dismissals of torture is that it doesn’t work, so why bother? That’s tempting, but it’s too easy. Torture seems to me very likely to work provided that you can verify the information, which I assume interrogators can in at least some circumstances.

And that’s that. Case dismissed on the grounds that it “seems to me” that it works just fine (and some brief condescension towards anyone who doesn’t share this judgment). Now let’s see what U.S. Army Field Manual has to say

Use of torture and other illegal methods is a poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

Now here’s Amnesty International:

High-level US officials have frequently stated that the “war on terror” is a new war that requires new thinking. In fact, these officials seek to justify old methods that have long been de-legitimized. Suspending habeas corpus, “disappearing” detainees, incommunicado detention and the legalization of torture have been used in the name of national security and do not represent “new thinking.” These policies merely recycle old, ineffective practices that violate human rights and undermine the rule of law.

And human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith:

…it would seem that for the most part torture does not work, either because it extracts inaccurate information, or information that is not subject to verification. The prisoners in Guantánamo Bay have confessed to outlandish things when tortured and abused. The young British Muslims held there who came to be known as the “Tipton Three” admitted to being the shadowy figures on the edge of a video of Osama bin Laden, taped in Afghanistan in 2000. The problem for the prosecution was that they were working in an electronics store in Birmingham at the time.

So it really does seem that far from being a “red herring” which a few moments reflection can reveal to be unconvincing, which is only propounded by “facile” people who lack McArdle’s evident moral and intellectual seriousness, the view that torture is ineffective is one which many authorititive people who are informed about realities of the practice of torture feel rather certain of, and McArdle’s unsupported assertion to the contrary is in fact rather shockingly ignorant and glib.

But anyway Radek, thanks for dispelling any doubts I had that you might have been a real libertarian (in so far as anyone can be, since libertarians are by definition fake anarchists; but I thought you might have been, as it were, a genuine fake). It is now apparent from your impassioned defence of McArdle that you’re just another schmib.

So it really does seem that far from being a “red herring” which a few moments reflection can reveal to be unconvincing, which is only propounded by “facile” people who lack McArdle’s evident moral and intellectual seriousness, the view that torture is ineffective is one which many authorititive people who are informed about realities of the practice of torture feel rather certain of…

engels: Yes, but the view that “torture is ineffective” is not the same as the view that “torture is never effective.” Indeed one of the expert citations you provide underscore this logic. The Army manual says torture is a “poor” technique that yields “unreliable” results. It does not say that torture never works, or that it is impossible to torture a prisoner into yielding valuable information.

We can and should embrace the view that torture is a poor technique for obtaining intelligence. But why is it even necessary — or desirable — to argue about its usefulness, when we know that torture is immoral? Surely this is what McArdle is saying. A focus on the lack of effectiveness of torture leaves hanging, in the air, unstated, the implication that it just might be permissible to utilize illegal interrogation techniques if we could find a way to make them work. I don’t think any reasonable person desires this state of affairs to come about. Still, one could imagine, say, in the aftermath of a future terrorist attack on American soil, a group of hawkish legislators proposing a bill that would fund torture research. After all, if we could only get it to work…

Dismissing the effectiveness of torture isn’t so much facile, as it is a dangerous diversion.

No, it’s not what she is saying. What part of “torture seems to me very likely to work” don’t you understand?

I understand perfectly the meaning of McArdle’s sentence. What I think you misjudge is its intent.

McArdle is simply giving us a “provocative” warning not to base our arguments against torture on utilitarianism. Now, I realize “very likely” is a bit over the top. But who knows, with a bit of much needed funding (irony intended), my guess is the Powers That Be could study and perfect torture methods. After all, it’s not like torture can never work. I think it’s fairly well-documented, for instance, that the Gestapo was able to capture Jean Moulin and strike effectively against the French underground with information obtained from tortured prisoners (the name “Klaus Barbie” comes to mind). Simply juxtaposing the terms “Gestapo” and “US interrogation methods” ought to be enough, dammit. We don’t need to go on to say “torture is always ineffective. To me this focus on the utility of torture has always seemed an unnecessary and risky overreach. In similar fashion, I might add, to discussions about capital punishments. Opponents of the death penalty often point out its lack of effect on crime rates. While I agree with them, I’ve always found it’s more effective to focus on morality. It’s simply wrong to take a life in vengeance. Just like it’s simply wrong to cruelly treat and inflict pain on a prisoner. It’s just wrong. It’s not necessary — and ill-advised — to base one’s arguments on whether or not it works. Otherwise we risk having the anti-torture edifice undermined in the event of a change in its level of effectiveness. Why leave the door open?