The non-hypocricy of tolerance

[jack]

Did I talk about this before?

Sometimes people you share a society (or a household) with are wrong about really important things. But it's usually best to say, if they're not harming *other* people, to allow your views to be known, but mostly simply let it go. For several reasons:

* Partly practical reasons, that changing someone's mind is often a difficult or impossible, so haranguing them is likely to make you feel better but not actually help, and mutually agreeing to suspend the haranguing unless you have time to talk about it properly is better for both of you.
* Partly humility, you can't be right about EVERYTHING, and how are you going to improve if you don't listen to other people?
* Partly morality: that imposing your opinion on someone else, even if you're right THIS time, erodes people's right to decide for themselves in lots of other cases.

Unfortunately, it's rarely that simple, because often people ARE harming other people, and you SHOULD try to fix it, but sometimes you're forced to compromise for now anyway just because there's only one of you and lots of other people and you can't overpower all of them instantly, and it's hard to find an acceptable compromise, but necessary to try to live in a society with other people at all.

However, whenever I recap the argument for tolerating opposing viewpoints in my mind, I always ask myself, "But what about people who DON'T agree to let it go and allow people to decide for themselves, people who insist their views MUST be imposed on you (whether for good reasons or not)?" As a practical matter, if you don't want to capitulate, you have no choice but to resist. But only recently did I admit, I basically had to accept, tolerating OTHER views as long as they didn't harm anyone else, but that itself was an exception, you had no choice but to impose "tolerate other views as long as they don't harm anyone else" on people if you can, even if you disagree...

Comments

[jack]

But how does that not fit the golden rule?

It seems to fit morally -- presumably people who think apostasy should be punishable by death, don't want people from some other religion to come along and say "our religion says we should kill you for some reason that only makes sense to our religion", and should treat apostates accordingly, if they agree with the golden rule?

And it seems to fit practically -- whether you think it's moral or not, you should avoid killing people because they may try to kill you back.

My post could be something like, if they DON'T accept the golden rule, because they claim that killing apostates is more important than that, then you have to prevent it, coercively if necessary.

evil isn't irrational.

I think both -- I think there are sorts of evil that come from laziness and short-sightedness, and sorts of evil that are pefectly rational but come from selfishness and not choosing to value other people at all...

[gerald_duck]

presumably people who think apostasy should be punishable by death, don't want people from some other religion to come along and say "our religion says we should kill you for some reason that only makes sense to our religion", and should treat apostates accordingly, if they agree with the golden rule?

The "how would you like it if our religion did the same to you?" argument, in many people's eyes, simply doesn't work. Their religion is right and yours is wrong. From that perspective such arguments make as much sense as "You want to punish people for burning orphans? How would you feel if we punished you for burning logs?" They see a moral distinction between religion A and religion B which destroys the symmetry required to apply the Golden Rule in the way you'd like.

[jack]

Yes, that's hard, but all non-trivial applications of the golden rule include allowing other people to be wrong about something (if you agreed all the time, you wouldn't need it).

Either they accept that the people they want to kill are people, and accept that even if THEY think that's the right thing to do, they shouldn't impose on those people. And we have the golden rule working.

Or they think that their morality is SO persuasive that they should impose it on other people for good reasons even if the other people don't want it. Which is self-consistent, but seems to me to be exactly REJECTING the golden rule, and the thrust of my original post is that in that case, you may have no choice but to resist them physically.

[gerald_duck]

So… taxation exactly rejects the golden rule and should therefore be physically resisted?

[jack]

Good point, I forgot that. It's impossible to allow people complete autonomy. I think in some cases (taxes) we do have to impose them, even if in others we should not. I don't have a clear rule for the difference, other than "what seems to work".

[gerald_duck]

It's impossible to allow people complete autonomy.

Ah, but is it, though?

Forcing people to do things feels very short-termist. It would clearly be better if people were doing things willingly. If they won't do it willingly, enforcement will get you part-way there in the short term, but does it get you any closer to the ultimate goal of people who want to contribute?

I guess there are examples of cases where it does. Support for the death penalty gradually falls in countries which abolish it, for example. But I'm not seeing people gradually happier about giving money to the state as a result of taxation.

Asking the really big question: if someone sits on a big pile of money while other people are poor, whom are they really hurting?

[jack]

Ah, but is it, though?

Yes, because:

* as mentioned elsewhere, people need to be prevented from doing things which harm other people
* if one person has a pile of food or shelter (aka money) and other people are suffering without, they should be forced to share to some extent
* sometimes enforcing decisions on people clearly IS for their own good (eg. infrastructure building, disaster funds, etc)

Forcing people to do things feels very short-termist. It would clearly be better if people were doing things willingly. If they won't do it willingly, enforcement will get you part-way there in the short term, but does it get you any closer to the ultimate goal of people who want to contribute?

I agree, I think we are in the PROCESS of moving towards a society where people agree. I don't know for sure, but I hope, as civilisation goes on, it slowly gets less violent, as fewer and fewer people find that to their actual advantage, and people are more and more accepting, progressive, and in favour of moderate redistribution. I think those are already happening.

But they haven't finished. I think people are mostly in favour of SOME useful taxes, and generally against most violence. But only because they've grown up with that. I want to move towards a society where violence and poverty are increasingly unthinkable. But I think you have to MAKE those things happen for a long time before people do them automatically. And you probably always need SOME civic enforcement of people who don't or can't play by the rules.

[gerald_duck]

As noted elsewhere, I don't necessarily agree that we prevent people from doing things that harm other people. Discourage, always, but not prevent.

I do wonder what would happen if a nation created an income tax opt-out. By default you pay, but anybody who wants to can fill in a form that says "until further notice, I choose not to pay income tax, signed ___", it gets processed, they keep the tax. The list of who opts out isn't made public; opting out is between you and your conscience.

One thing's for sure, it would take all the transgressive excitement out of tax evasion and tax avoidance. Never again could someone boast about finding a loophole. In the process it would remove the incentive for accountants to advocate tax non-payment, in the same way that the state providing drugs to addicts removes the incentive for drug dealers to get people addicted.

What's more, all the elaborate machinery of tax rebates and examptions could be eliminated: if you think it right that you pay less tax, pay less tax.

Also, the sense of participation would be far higher if people knew they'd chosen to let the government have a share of their earnings.

As 1 Tim 6:10 says, the love of money is the root of all evil. Granted, that needs to be taken in context — plenty of evils have little to do with money. On the other hand, I made the above comparison with drugs intentionally. Sensible commentators realise a "war on drugs" doesn't work, and makes the problem worse. Maybe if we also realise the love of money is an addiction, we could similarly start treating its victims with compassion and tolerance. Taxing a money addict does no more good — to them or society — than taking away a heroin addict's stash. They'll just go and find some more money, probably in an antisocial way.

[jack]

Hm, that's an interesting question. I think it's very cultural whether people would choose to opt-out. I think it ties together with some of the other things we've considered, that in a society where everyone is used to the idea that they have a responsibility to pay a far amount of tax, and don't feel disadvantaged by that, people probably would, but if the idea of tax is new, people would have a more "well, why should I?" attitude. And our current society is somewhere inbetween.

I'd also be afraid of a prisoner's dilemma style problem if it's completely optional: people are often willing to chip in to cover other people when it's a complete emergency, but feel it's futile to try to cover their fair share if everyone else in similar situations is opting out. People might be more willing to pay if it's strongly encouraged that everyone pays, even if it's not quite mandatory.

[gerald_duck]

I'd also be afraid of a prisoner's dilemma style problem

Indeed. As would many people.

One of Jesus' key messages was that the "I'll do it if (and only if) you'll do it" mentality doesn't build bridges to anything like the same extent as doing the right thing without first waiting to see if anybody else will join you. "I'll do it if you make it compulsory so that person I envy can't not do it" is even more problematic, because that other person is going to be looking for loopholes.

That's really challenging, though. Living up to it individually is difficult, let alone persuading an entire nation to.

But difficult isn't the same thing as impossible. Nor the same thing as "not to be attempted'.