Amartya Sen on Economics & Health

 Health care uses up scarce resources. Economics is concerned with making better choices in the use of scarce resources. Since health care and education are 'Income Elastic'- i.e. demand for both rises as productivity, and hence income, rises. 

It may be that British Doctors were unaware of these facts which is why Lancet asked Amartya Sen to write about 

Economics and health

some 25 years ago.  

There is a gross story, but there are also some finer ones.

Nope. There is only one story. Medicine costs money. Those who earn more can be sure of getting more. End of.  

The glaring connection between economic prosperity and good health is one of strong positive association.

No. There is a causal connection between having more money and being able to spend more on Health Care. There is none between being rich and being healthy. This is why kids, who have no money, are likely to be healthier and have higher life expectancy than very elderly, debauched, billionaires.  

People of richer countries typically suffer less from diseases of one kind or another,

No. They suffer less from preventable or curable diseases because they can pay for more healthcare. They may have higher mortality for currently non-curable or non-preventable diseases if they have an ageing population with a sedentary lifestyle and health conditions related to affluence. 

and live longer.

Unless they take a lot of drugs and enjoy shooting each other.  

Richer people in the same country also typically have fewer illnesses and live longer.

See above.  

Economic prosperity can thus be seen to be a good way of living better and living longer.

Because prosperity means 'living better'. You can certainly spend money on increasing your expected longevity.  

As we move from one millennium to another, that gross story can indeed be a good starting point for analysis.

No. It is the last word on the subject. If a country raises productivity it can have more of all 'normal' goods and services including Health, Education, Policing, Transfers to the indigent, Environmental clean up, etc. etc. But everybody, except Sen, already knows this.  

But it would be a mistake to take this to be the main wisdom to emerge from empirical studies on the relation between economic prosperity and good health.

Those 'empirical studies' are junk social science. This is not to say that ordinary people with lived experience of Healthcare can't figure out ways to make things work better. That's 'wisdom'. They don't teach it at Grad Skool.  

Let me begin with discussing a statistical connection. Consider the important statistical analysis presented by Sudhir Anand and Martin Ravallion on inter-country comparisons between less-developed countries. 

They asked the question 'Should development priorities shift toward the provision of public services in poor countries, even if such a shift is at the expense of income growth?' 25 years later we know the answer. Fuck provision of public services. They will turn to shit when the country goes off a fiscal cliff. Focus on income growth based on raising productivity preferably by climbing a value chain and participating in global markets. People are happy to pay for more healthcare and education as their income rises. 

They found that life expectancy does indeed have a significantly positive correlation with gross national product (GNP) per head,

It enough to point out that Puerto Rico has higher life expectancy than the US to show that there is no causal link here. It is likely that some affluent countries would have lower life expectancy than some poor countries if the Pharmaceutical industry didn't have such a strong incentive to keep coming up with cures for 'diseases of affluence'. 

but that the former also links closely with the incomes specifically of the poor,

Not if they are not counted in the figures. In some countries 'life expectancy' is a guess or is massaged by the authorities. In others, it is something actuaries can rely upon.  

and with public expenditure particularly in health care.

No shit, Sherlock! Health-care costs money and getting it is closely linked to spending money on it. What Sen doesn't say is that poor countries don't have much money for public expenditure of any type. If they decide to first concentrate on health, education, transfers, etc, rather than income generation, then the very quickly run out of money and you have abandoned schools and hospitals and a complete collapse of transfers. Smart people have run away and productivity stagnates or falls because of lack of investment and crumbling infrastructure.  

Furthermore, once these two variables are included on their own in the statistical exercise, no extra explanation can be obtained by also including the GNP per head as an additional explanatory variable.

Because in 'less developed countries' most people are poor. Still, GNP per head is important. If it is much higher than the poverty level, then there is 'fiscal headroom'- i.e. public expenditure on health, education may be sustainable. Otherwise, one way or another, club goods will be rationed. Generally, this means, the poorest go to the wall.  

Indeed, with poverty and public-health expenditure as variables on their own, the statistical connection between GNP per head and life expectancy seems to vanish altogether.

Only if the Statistician is as stupid as shit. It should be remembered, Sen didn't actually know any econometrics. If GNP per capita falls below the subsistence level, then either people have to emigrate, rely on charity, or prepare to die in great numbers.  

What does this result show?

Economists are stupid. Stop funding them. 

Not that GNP per head or a country's average economic opulence is irrelevant to longevity,

It is all that matters. A country which has no money can't spend on shit. The question is, what should poor countries focus on? Well, if they can't compete globally, maybe they should educate their kids and rely on remittances while making the place a nice one to retire to. This is the Kerala model. Cuba exports pharma and doctors and also spends a lot on education. But, its economy is in dire straits.  

but that the influence of economic opulence on longevity may work mostly through the relation between opulence and two crucial policy variables (poverty removal, public health-care).

In other words, if you have the money to pay pay people to buy stuff and also provide them free health-care, then that's what you can do. But should you? Probably not. Spend on what can raise your income in the future. Your country is simply too poor to imitate the policies of affluent Welfare States. Obviously, you needn't actually admit that. Tell lies same as other politicians do.  

Much would thus depend on how the fruits of economic growth are used.

Did you know that if you gave a lot of your fruits to very poor people then they would nice fruit to eat? Oh. You did. In that case you don't need a Nobel Prize in Econ to convince yourself you understand the subject. Still, the question remains, should you give away all your fruit to the poor or should you sell as much as you can at a high price and then invest in other income generating schemes? The answer is, do the latter otherwise your country will remain a shithole. 

This helps to explain why some economies (such as South Korea and Taiwan,

both of which faced a military threat and therefore had conscription. They needed to do export led growth because the US could pull the plug on them anytime. Look at Ukraine now. Trump says 'Since I pay the piper, I call the tune. I will decide everything with my pal Putin. Zelenskyy can go fuck himself.'  

among others in east and southeast Asia) have been able to raise life expectancy so rapidly through economic growth,

Life expectancy would have risen away because hostilities hand ended and much better, cheaper, medicines were becoming available. 

whereas others with a similar record in fast economic growth (such as Brazil)

but Brazil had free, universal, care since 1990!  

have not achieved correspondingly rapid longevity expansion.

Nonsense! Brazil converged quite rapidly to the US rate till a few years ago. It is likely that Korean, Japanese and Taiwanese diet is more healthy than that of the US which is why such countries overtook the US. 

There is a further issue in not taking the gross account to be the final one.

That issue is nonsense.  

Even though for all the countries put together, the richer ones do indeed show greater achievement in life expectancy, the outliers may tell us something quite important about public policy.

Doctors know life expectancy went up because of better, cheaper, drugs. There was little point having much in the way of public health policy when health-care was shit. Sen doesn't understand this. 

Indeed, we can get a “sub-story” in separating out some countries with very different extents of activism in public health-care, and notice that the ones more committed to public healthcare do very much better than the ones not so committed.

Sen comes from India. He should know that 'commitment to public health care' quickly disappears if it turns out to be shit. Kerala is a nice place to live and Doctors and nurses aren't incessantly kidnapped or raped. Anyway, it could export Doctors and Nurses and also benefitted from remittances. Tamil Nadu was more pro growth and might now be ahead in certain respects. West Bengal, sadly, is now a place where Doctors are beaten or raped in the very hospitals they work in.  

Study the GNP per head and life expectancy at birth of six countries (China,

which got rid of free universal (but 'barefoot') medical care in the Eighties. Provision increased and improved in quality as Income grew 

Sri Lanka,

has had free universal healthcare since the 1930s 

Namibia, Brazil, South Africa, Gabon

South Africa and Gabon had a big AIDS problem 

) and Kerala, a sizeable state in India with 30 million people—

where fifteen percent of the workforce is labouring abroad to send home remittances. This is not true of the other countries. Anyway, China- which focussed on Income growth, has outperformed all the other countries. It had quarter the per capita income of Brazil in 2000 (Kerala has now reached that level) but it is now twenty percent richer. Incidentally, it still spends a smaller portion of its GDP on healthcare than Brazil.  

large enough to count as a country, but with a much better record of public education and health care than the Indian average.

Tamil Nadu, which went for income generation, has pretty much closed the gap. Still, it is Nagaland which comes out top. I suppose, giving up head-hunting dramatically impacts longevity.  

Despite their very low levels of income, the people of Kerala, China, and Sri Lanka enjoy much longer life expectancy

no. Once you take into account risk factors, life expectancy isn't much greater 

than do the much richer populations of Brazil, South Africa, Namibia, and Gabon (figure).

No. The very poor in Kerala did a bit better than the very poor in some other Indian states. That's all we can say.  It is pointless comparing Kerala to places with different risk factors. Kerala did spend more on health and education relative to per capita income. But, a lot of that had to do with remittances. There was a culture of doing arduous labour abroad so as to pay the family's medical bills and school fees. But Kerala would be much better off now if it had encouraged the growth of industry. In other words, the people of Kerala now realize that 'the Kerala model' was stupid. 

Health and longevity does respond to greater care,

which is only given because more money is being spent 

despite the barrier of low income.

I could buy a superyacht, despite the barrier of low income, if the Government gave me a billion dollars. This  

The fact that health care, basic education, and other crucial components of social opportunity are highly labour-intensive activities make them affordable even in poorer economies, where labour is also cheaper.

Sadly, they may be wholly shit. Illiterate teachers and Doctors who don't know Medicine may be very cheap and you may be able to hire lots of them, but they are also useless.  

A related lesson emerges also from the observed fact that in the USA, African Americans as a group—men and women—have a lower chance of reaching advanced age than do men and women born in the immensely poorer economy of the Indian state of Kerala, and (in the case specifically of men) than do the Chinese as well.

In 2000, African Americans had higher life-expectancy than did people in Kerala. However, they were much more likely to die of affluence related diseases. Sen was simply wrong to keep banging on about Kerala. Its people worked hard but did not get a commensurate reward because income-generating activities were not permitted to burgeon. This is changing. Kerala's tax base is collapsing because more and more of those who work abroad now choose to settle there as well. Their mansions back home are empty and no tax can be collected from them.  

The shorter lives

this has shrunk from about 7 to about 3 years. 

of African Americans relate not to their low incomes

yes it does. Rich African Americans got the best medical care in the world and lived to a ripe old age.  

(they are, in fact, very much richer in per-capita income than the Chinese or the Keralite), but to the lack of guaranteed health care (with big gaps in medical insurance), blighted educational arrangements, and other problems of social malaise and disruption. 

caused by low incomes. Sen truly is as stupid as shit.  

Indeed, the average African American man in New York, or San Francisco, or the District of Columbia has a lower life expectancy than does even the average man in India or Pakistan.

The average non-drug taking, non-gun toting, African American man had higher life expectancy than similar people in India or Pakistan even with some level of affluence related disease.  

So what do we conclude?

Sen has shit for brains.  

The gross story stands, but it needs to be supplemented by the finer aspects of the relation between economics and health.

There are no finer details. There are only stupid lies. Ceteris paribus, more spending on health-care (howsoever it is done) correlates with better outcomes. But spending requires income. Thus, the first priority must be raising income rather than putting the cart before the horse and spending first and hoping the income will turn up later on.  

Economic prosperity certainly helps, taking the rough with the smooth.

Health care uses up scarce resources. Economic prosperity provides those resources. There is no rough. There is no smooth. There is simply this fact which is known to all.  

It is, however, up to us to build more smoothness in the rough terrain.

Sen didn't build shit. He was simply wrong to say that poor countries should first focus on health and education rather than income generation. Every developed country took a hard-hearted route to prosperity. Once Incomes rose, more was spent on 'normal' goods- like Health, Education, etc. There could be economies of scope and scale in having public provision of this. For poor countries, raise the productivity of those already making a living in these fields and let competition raise standards. For the affluent, the market will provide and as Income rises, it will be profitable to extend this. At a later point you can have an integrated National Health System. But the thing can't be created and sustained if per capita Income isn't high enough.  

The fact that public policy makes a difference

if there is sufficient tax revenue- not otherwise 

is of interest not just for social activism,

i.e. pretending there is a magic money tree which the Government is meanly refusing to let poor people have access to 

but also for good economic analysis.

Something Sen was incapable of.  

We reap as we sow.

Sen sowed nothing and reaped nothing. It isn't the case that saying 'be virtuous' is itself virtuous nor that telling other people to give money to charity means that you are yourself a great philanthropist.  Still, Sen got paid to talk bollocks and, with commendable diligence, that is precisely what he did and, 25 years later, still does. 

Agnes Callard's domestic agon

It is possible that Agnes Callard is autistic and this explains her obsession with talking and arguing. However, what permits her to write books is stupidity. The belief she holds- viz. that a superior state is achieved through talking and arguing than by studying and thinking- has been rejected by every type of Paideia or system of certification for knowledge in every culture and at all times. That is why, when taking an exam, you are expected to sit silently drawing on what you have learned and 'arguing against yourself' in order to reason correctly. Equally, if a person claims expertise in a field, he is expected to actually carry knowledge and skill in his own brain rather than rely upon an interlocutor. This is not to say that there can be a fruitful exchange of information or that one person can't point out a flaw in another person's argument. However, where information is routinely written down and disseminated without need for personal interaction, and where logic is well enough understood for people to spot their own fallacies, then 'argument' is a highly sub-optimal method of pedagogy save for particular purposes- e.g. training as an advocate or politician- which is not essentially epistemic or concerned with alethia. 

Nautilis magazine has the following interview with Agnes Callard titled 'argue your way to a fuller life.' which I believe substantially plagiarizes arguments I made in my bestselling 'Dieter's guide to weight-loss through farting' which, alas, I haven't gotten round to writing. 

Agnes Callard wasn’t happy with her answer to one of my interview questions. I asked what she thought of a remark by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins that existential “why” questions should never be asked because they’re unanswerable.

This was Lord Buddha's viewpoint. But that is because he subscribed to a doctrine of momentariness. It is perfectly possible that everything that exists does so merely virtually in a simulation running in negative time which is being used for some arcane computational purpose. 

Only “how” questions were proper in science.

Natural science- sure. But we can't be sure the Universe is a natural, rather than supernatural, phenomenon.  

That evening, the University of Chicago philosopher put the question to her family at their recurring “Chautauqua.”

Which was silly. None of them are natural scientists.  

Callard’s three kids, ages 11, 16 and 21, plus her husband and ex-husband—who all live together—took part in the discussion. They traded ideas on science

of which they know nothing 

and metaphysics,

of which nothing can be known because we have no means of going 'beyond' what is physical  

the meaning of life and ethics,

in which any question is answerable any which way  

what is empirical and what isn’t.

which is itself an empirical matter.  

When one of her kids started talking about Wittgenstein,

a Tiger Mommy would have slapped the kid and taunted it for having failed to prove the Reimann hypothesis even though it turned eight a couple of months ago.  

I couldn’t help feeling my own family conversations were sorely lacking. 

As if the question 'who farted?' isn't one which engrossed Einstein in his salad days.  

The intensity of the Callard’s dinner discussion epitomizes the philosopher herself.

If by intensity you mean obtuseness- sure.  

Callard discovered Socrates in high school,

like most of us. But, in high school, we thought him a dick. It is only towards the end of a pointless life that you begin to see there was a pathos to him.  

and by the time she was a senior in college, she was obsessed. “I didn’t just want to interpret Socrates,” she writes. “I wanted to be Socrates.”

Sadly, she didn't get busy quaffing hemlock.  

She started hanging out on the front steps of the Art Institute of Chicago and would walk up to strangers and ask if they wanted to have a philosophical discussion.

Like Woody Allen's 'Whore of MENSA' 

At first, they were intrigued,

was she offering a golden shower or something more kinky? 

but then they just wanted to get away from her. “I’ve kind of spent my whole life since then trying to figure out how to do that but not make people run away from me,” she said with a laugh.

The answer was simple. Get a job teaching that shite to kids who are too thick to understand they are being swindled.  

Our discussion about “rational love” and “philosophical dissatisfaction” in a marriage are representative of Callard’s prescription, via Socrates, for a meaningful life.

Presumably she means a more meaningful life. Life would still be meaningful if you are a bachelor though, no doubt, you may find it difficult to find people to argue with. But wife beating too is a recreation which requires a spouse.

Which, Callard believes, can only come about through conversation—and especially argument—with other people.

Yet we may speak of our own dialogue with Socrates or Christ or the Buddha. More generally, we map out in our minds the way we would like conversations of a mission critical nature to unfold. We seek to anticipate ways in which such conversations may be deflected in a manner contrary to our interests. 

You recount a time in Leo Tolstoy’s life when he was going through a personal crisis. By his early 50s he was world famous and in a good marriage but was so unhappy that he was thinking about suicide. What happened?

He could easily lose his position as, it appeared, Turgenev was losing his. Also he was drinking way too much. He was clinically depressed.  

He comes to realize he was looking away from some questions

these are the 4 last questions all Christians must ask themselves. Tolstoy was a Christian. 

I once had a contentious interview with Richard Dawkins who said there are no big “why” questions.

He meant, in the natural sciences.  

There are only “how” questions such as “How did the universe begin or how did birds evolve wings to fly?” I pushed back, suggesting it’s worth asking existential questions like “Why are we here?” Even if they can’t be answered. How would you respond to Dawkins?

The Humanities and the Social Sciences deal with purposive, that is teleological, phenomena. But, even the police have to establish motive in order to get a conviction for first degree murder.  

My reasoning goes the other way. We need to answer these questions.

No. We may want to, or may get paid for, doing so. But a want is not a need. I may say 'I really need to tell you about the time I fucked both your Mum and your wife. I feel I will die if I don't.' But, if you punch me sufficiently hard and sufficiently often, I will understand that I don't need anything of the sort.  

There’s a dialogue where Socrates is challenged by a Richard Dawkins kind-of-guy named Meno,

Meno, the pupil of Gorgias, was not a scientist. He was interested in rhetoric- i.e. persuading people to adopt one's point of view. One might say Plato's Meno shows him, quite ironically, achieving his aim precisely because he appears baffled and lets Socrates develop a wholly crazy 'karmic' epistemology- viz. that learning is recollecting knowledge acquired in previous lives- which begs the question of how this was done in those previous lives. One answer is that time is a snake swallowing its own tail.  

who basically says, “I don’t think we can make progress on these questions.”

But progress can be made in virtue or any other worthy field by divine inspiration. The question is whether knowledge must supply its own aetiology or whether mere verification or independent confirmation is sufficient. This can still be an open question in Math & some branches of the Natural Sciences and thus is philosophical.  

Socrates gives an elaborate answer to explain why he thinks it does make sense to inquire into these questions. He’s saying I’m going to be a better person if I have the courage to try to make progress on this project

He doesn't say that. Courage to do something foolhardy or impossible can't make you a better person.  

—on which the value of human life hangs—without an advance guarantee that I’m going to succeed.

There is no advance guarantee that you won't drop dead one second from now. Why mention the topic?  

Socrates puts it in a simple way: The unexamined life is not worth living.

Only for those who like examining it.  A divinely inspired life is worth living even if the person living it never reflects on what he or she is doing at the command of the deity or daimon. However, in Socrates's case, his daimon had him examine himself and if he had to continue doing so only on the other side of the grave- so be it. Moreover what Socrates actually said was 'ho dè anexétastos bíos ou biōtòs anthrṓpōi'. Men can't live an unexamined life. There is judgment after death unless one is beforehand in this matter. This fits with karmic or other eschatological notions found around the world. 

You call these “untimely questions.”

Christianity, like other Religions, says you have to ask yourself these questions while you yet have time to repent and expiate your sins.  

Most of us don’t want to think about the deeper meaning of our lives.

Many of us believe in an after-life, if not for ourselves, then for our loved ones who certainly deserve Heaven.  

We’ve got our careers, our children, our daily pursuits.

Kids can die. Careers can go up in smoke. Disability may curtail our daily pursuits. It is then that people turn to God or Karma or a mystical view of things such that everything which has ever existed participates in everything that is or will come to be.

As you say, “You put one foot in front of another, over and over again, right up to the moment when your journey is cut off by death.”

No you don't. Breathing is another matter.  

By contrast, Socrates never stopped asking these questions.

In which case there is no big contrast between him and the guy who just kept walking till he dropped dead. 

What did he do that was different?

Some 'Socratified Youth'- i.e. people he spent a lot of time talking to- conspired on three different occasion against the public weal. That's why he was executed.  

Socrates discovered you can inquire into deeper questions about life by calling into question someone else’s answers.

Plenty had done so before him. 'Elenkhos' or cross-examination was practiced in the Courts.  

There’s a certain kind of thinking you can’t do by yourself because you have blind spots.

That doesn't matter. You can read what other people have written to discover what those might be. I have a 'blind spot' when it comes to understanding Math. But I can read books which enable me to 'fill in the gaps' such that I can use a mathematical technique well enough to get paid for it.  

You have a whole self-justifying, rationalizing edifice that supports all your mistakes.

You may do. But why bother? It is easy enough to 'course correct' when you discover you are mistaken. Thus, when I discovered that 'double entry' didn't mean what I thought it did in a book-keeping context, I gave up Accountancy. I didn't try to justify what I was doing by claiming that there was a new Statement of Standard Accounting Practice issued by the British Institute of Chartered Accountants which licensed what I was about to do to the photocopier. Anyway, if the Partners did it to typists, what was so wrong about my seeking to pleasure the photocopier? Was I being victimized coz I iz bleck? Also, it was a Japanese photocopier- i.e. totes slutty.  

It’s often very easy for other people to see your mistakes but incredibly hard for you to see them.

It is easier yet for other people to see your mistakes when you haven't actually made any.  

But there are other models that value interiority for probing a difficult question.

Sadly, they aren't super-models which is why Trump didn't try to bang them. The plain fact is interiorities which aren't moderately good looking don't get probed. Callard lucked out in that respect though she wears glasses and men seldom make passes at such creatures. Thankfully, philosophers have lower standards.  

I might go off by myself for deep reflection, or a writer might work this out on the printed page. That’s the opposite of what Socrates did.

We don't know that. It appears he did write stuff which, probably for a very good reason, his admirers kept shtum about.  

As an academic philosopher, I give a lot of talks. Before I do, I’m thinking to myself, “What objections are the audience going to come up with?” But every time I give a talk, I get questions that surprise me.

Presumably because you are autistic or just plain retarded.  

How did I not ask myself that?

How did you not know that the same question which surprised you was asked thousands of years ago? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing unless what you are paid to teach is psilosophy- slender wisdom. 

And the answer is, I was very invested in thinking that I was right about an idea. Other people are the ones who can help me see when I’m wrong.

Even when you aren't wrong. That's the problem with other people. Guys keep phoning me and warning me that I am committing a terrible mistake by refusing to share with them my password and Bank account details.  

And this is especially the case with ethics, right?

Ethics is about changing your own ethos- what you are for yourself- in a manner which makes you a better human being. Don't listen to others when they tell you that it is unethical of you not to give them a blowjob. By all means approach a person manifestly better than yourself and seek instruction or mentorship.  

Right. Socrates believes you can’t really think about ethics except in relation to other people.

No. It is a different matter that he himself was inspired to 'inquire into human' rather than divine, or scientific, or legal affairs.  

What you’re holding onto, in trying to be good, only comes from conversations with people.

Which is why the deaf and dumb are truly fucked.  

That’s all you’ve got.

No. Language isn't that important. It may be that meditating in a Himalayan cave for fifty years can enable you to become a morally perfected being. But Socrates had a different mission- one directed at his own natal Polis.  

Deep down inside yourself, you don’t know what the right thing to do is.

Sure you do.  

Socrates says the greatest favor that you can do for another human being is to refute them.

An even greater favor would be to punch them in the nose and then run away.  

And he thinks, “Yeah, be kind and loving,” which is to say, explain to people why their fundamental understanding of their lives is wrong.

Sadly, Mike Tyson objects to people telling him that he is a homo who ought to be sucking cock.  

Most people would take offense at being told they’re wrong.

Fuck taking offense. What should worry you is being knifed or shot.  

I’ve had this experience many times. It happens in my classrooms or when an interviewer says, “Wait a minute.” You could respond defensively, like, “No, here’s why I’m right.”

If you have a 'knock-down' argument, just produce it already. It's like that time I got into an argument with Vikram Seth. His 'knock-down' argument was that he was a Chinese lady. Also, the reason my bill was so extortionate was because I had drunk two bottles of Kweichow Moutai. The wonder was I could see at all. 

But if you set aside that response and take a step back, there are openings, moments when things get interesting.

Not if you are talking to a boring turd who teaches nonsense to imbeciles.  

You say parents should have philosophical conversations with their children. How should we talk to our kids?

We should talk to them in Mandarin. Say things like 'Wei wun Ping Pong. Nix Sun ding dong.' They'll soon get the hang of it and answer us back in like fashion. Other parents will think we have spent mega-bucks arranging tuition in Chinese for our kids. 

Your kids give you a chance to learn about how the world looks from someone who hasn’t been fully shaped by it.

Kids do say the darndest things. This is why it is important to get them to make only Chinese type noises. Otherwise they tell teechur all sorts of things which lead to a visit from Child Protection. 

That should be an exciting educational opportunity for parents. I see that as one reason to have kids.

Sadly, kids tend to lose patience with parents who ask questions like 'why is a cow?'  

My kids are very used to me posing questions to them because I raised them to not know there was any alternative.

I suppose she also gets the toddler to write her books. That's smart.  

If someone came to my house and I peppered them with questions, they might wonder, “Why are you doing this?” But once you do it a lot, it starts to come naturally to you.

No. It came naturally to you which is why you did it.  

You also say we need to get better at talking about politics.

more particularly, to cats.  

How can we have good political arguments that don’t just focus on defeating your adversary?

Good political arguments seek to persuade people with different affiliations. You have succeeded, when the issue ceases to be partisan. Let politicians compete on the basis of who is more attached or capable of delivering the policy proposal in question.  

You need to get into the mindset where you’re prepared to learn from them.

No. You just have to find a policy proposal which all stakeholders gain from. Other people can sell it to the bigots and mugwumps within their own ranks. 

They’re the people who can educate you because they have the opposite view.

They can't educate you. They can contradict you in a manner which causes you to wonder whether you have been mis-educated.  

You might say, “Let’s identify the fundamental point on which we disagree.”

The answer is 'you think you are smart. I think you are a cretin. That's the point you need to shove up your fundament.'  

It’s very striking when you do that because you find it’s hard to identify. If you say, “We believe in freedom,” the other side will say,

'No you don't. What you call freedom is slavery'.  

“We believe in freedom too.”

In that case, you are on the same side.  

You may then discover that your principle, which you thought had a deep, strong, emotional moral intuition, wasn’t stable but subject to your moods.

You know this is the case whether or not you have anybody to talk to. In principle, I like swimming for one hour every day. In practice, sometimes I'm not in the mood to engage in any type of exercise.  

The difficulty comes when people have a hard time believing their opponents can argue in good faith.

No great difficulty is involved in pointing out the reason you think they are arguing in bad faith- e.g. that is what they are paid to do.  

It’s probably not going to help if there are a lot of people watching.

It may help. It may not. Some people will only exert themselves if enough people are watching. There is little point in mopping the floor with your opponent if only the cat is present.  

People tend to be more performative when there are people watching.

Or they may clam up while looking daggers at you. The meaning is, 'I'll gun you down the moment these potential witnesses are gone'.  

Sometimes the Socratic approach seems counterintuitive. You write about “rational love,” which sounds like an oxymoron. Isn’t love emotional rather than rational?

It is rational to have an emotion which promotes good outcomes for you. The Stoic doctrine of 'oikeiosis' or the notion of 'ordo amoris' explains this.  

Typically, yes. But I try to make a case for rational love. The thing that led to my intervention in this discourse is that something is really wrong with love.

Loving the wrong thing is wrong. No discourse needs to be intervened in to make so obvious a point.  

Maybe you have this romantic ideal: Grow up and marry someone and settle down.

Marriage is a commitment to settle down with one person- at least, in America.  

But the thing you want is not to find the perfect person or the perfect match.

Nothing wrong with wanting that or, indeed, in believing that is the case.  

That’s a kind of perfection in yourself that you’re seeking.

There may be. There may not.  

You’re aware that you’re not the person you should be, but you might be with another person’s help.

Or with God's. Marriage, in many cultures, is a sacrament.  

Then the question is, “What’s the thing that could potentially perfect you in a way that would make sense?” And my answer is knowledge, to understand how things work.

The evil genius may understand how things work better than anybody else. But he may still want to blow up the world. Knowledge has nothing to do with Perfection.  

Socrates didn’t care about many things we take for granted in a relationship, like the importance of accepting and admiring your partner.

He didn't spend a lot of time with his shrewish wife.  

He believed these are “static” qualities.

Even he preferred a spouse who didn't sleep in every bed but her own.  

Instead, he thought a successful relationship should be based on “philosophical dissatisfaction.”

The Parmenides describes a successful relationship between Parmenides and Zeno. There is no reason to think either is 'philosophically dissatisfied'.  

Can you explain this?

Here’s one way to think about it. What are the paradigmatic romantic activities—not necessarily sexual but romantic? One example that people give is the long, winding, transformative conversations that you have with someone when you’re beginning to become romantically interested.

OMG! This girl is actually talking to me! Fuck is she saying? I suppose she is talking about her boyfriend. I bet he has a ginormous dick. Wait a mo. She's kind of leaning in and looking into my eyes. Maybe she is an optician. Fuck! I probably have a cataract or some such thing. No. I had an eye-exam just last week. Her lips look very nice. Wish she'd shut up and let me kiss her. Obs, I'll tell everyone I got to third base. Fuck that. I'll say she went ass to mouth. In for a penny... 

Socrates wants to say, “Yeah, that’s what it’s all about.” But you don’t need to relegate that to the first three months of the relationship. There’s a reason why those conversations were so reliably venturing into philosophical territory.

Rather than her talking about her ex's ginormous dick or, as more frequently happens, her mentioning how much she charges per hour. Also, my pimp is a big black dude. He will fuck you up if you have been wasting my time.  

It’s because there’s something that your soul wants. Inquiry is a fundamentally dissatisfied activity.

It is a dissatisfying activity when done by shitheads.  

It isn’t contentment. It isn’t staring into each other’s eyes for hours and just being happy to do that.

Actually, that's pretty good too. The trouble with kissing is what happens to your noses? Don't they get in the way? Also, I shouldn't have eaten all the garlic bread. My breath must be foul. 

No, we were put here to achieve something together.

But ended up teaching stupid shite instead.  

Socrates was no prude, but you say he thought inquiry rather than sex is what is “truly dangerous, transgressive, and exciting.”

He liked chatting. Moreover, there were risks to what he was doing.  There are none in present day America. You will only be executed for first degree murder and that too only in certain States. 

Right. To have sex with someone is to be vulnerable with that person.

Not to mention vulnerability to various STDs.  

But Socrates discovered we have an even deeper form of vulnerability—the fear about the core ideas that make us who we are.

Only crazy people have any fear of this sort. If such 'core ideas' exist they are inaccessible, which is why Wizards can't change them so that we turn into frogs or lizards.  

The person we are is a construct that could be shattered.

 We can be battered. Shattered- not so much. We aren't made of glass. 

In Socratic inquiry, you allow that to happen.

Nobody was shattered or battered by Socrates. Even buggery appears to have been off the table.  

It’s very intimate and lends itself to people feeling somewhat violated, upset, jealous.

Socrates mentally sodomized me in the library! Help! I thought Universities were meant to be safe spaces.  

This is the moment when things, as I said, get interesting.

If by 'interesting' you mean 'as boring as shit'- then, sure.  

But for the interlocutors who haven’t fully been trained in this practice, there are going to be a lot of casualties.

Socrates killed more Athenians than the plague. He mentally sodomized them till they shattered.  

How does this way of thinking figure in your own life? You’ve been married twice, both times to philosophers.

i.e. people she worked with or whom she taught 

Is your approach to marriage different from most people?

Yes, I think it is. It’s important that my husband can hold me to account for this Socratic view.

In other words, it is important that both can talk bollocks while pretending to listen to each other. This is quite common in marriages and family life in general.  

He reminds me of it all the time. He’s like, “We just have to figure this out by talking about it.”

i.e. talking rather than knifing each other.  

So, there’s a certain move that’s kind of prohibited in my marriage, which is, “This is just the way it is.”

In other words, nobody holds the other to account for saying stupid shit.  

We may not be able to talk something through in a given moment, but everything is amenable to discussion. We’ll often be talking about a movie, and the disagreement we have about the movie will be like, wait a minute, this means we think differently about this other thing, and we should rethink that. From the outside, it might look very unstable.

No. It would look very very boring. I recall my feeling of shock when I discovered that my wife thought the film 'Mary Poppins' was about a nanny or a governess or some such creature. I explained that Satyajit Ray had intended the film as a critique of Eurocentric coloniality as the catachresis of the anteriority of the Neo-liberal cash nexus. She said 'darling, it is a Walt Disney movie. It isn't by Satyajit Ray. Also, you weren't really married to Mary Poppins during your time as a Secret Agent with a license to kill.' It was only then that I realized that the poor girl had been brainwashed by Ernest Stavro Blofeld. But this meant I hadn't really killed him in the volcano crater. He must have had a clone. 

You both seem to like arguing with each other.

My husband and I have been arguing for the past two days about something. I can’t tell you what is—it’s private—but it’s been nonstop arguing for two days.

Must we argue? Yes! Don't you understand that if we don't keep arguing, then, arguably, our heads may disappear up our own rectums! Is that what you really want? Me with my head stuck up my own ass? Do you really think I'm that ugly? 

We spent yesterday at the Art Institute in Chicago.

Which, according to Tripadvisor, is a slightly more pleasant way to pass the time then poking your eyes out.  

We were there for hours and we just argued the whole time.

Why the fuck do we have to come to this horrible place? You know why. I really don't. You said you'd still love me if my head was stuck up my rectum. What's so terrible about that? Didn't Socrates say to Alcibiades that he'd still be gorgeous with his head stuck up his own anus? No! That was Wittgenstein you fucking retard! Boy, did your mother do a number on you! Talk about being closeted! Not that again. Yes, that again! Only a fag would want a lovely lass like me to stick my head up my own asshole. But didn't Sappho herself do so to retain the affections of fickle Phaon? No. I think that was Mary Wollestonecroft. British women are as ugly as shit. No argument there! How dare you! There is an argument there. I bet I have a lot of turds in my intestines much prettier than any British woman. I think I'll quickly stick my head up my arse to have a look. Please don't, dear. This is the Art Institute after all. Why not save that sort of thing for when we visit the Fart Institute? Don't tell me when and where I can shove my own head up my own rectum! I was merely suggesting... No you weren't! You were trying to control my body! OMG! You are right! I'm so ashamed!  I'm going to stick my head up my arse because I literally can't show my face anywhere. You're just saying that to get out of this argument. Just like Wittgenstein? Fuck Wittgenstein. If you love him so much why don't you marry him? Not that again! Yes, that again! etc.

We kept trying to look at paintings, but we kept being drawn back into argument. It was very emotionally draining. We weren’t angry at each other, but it wasn’t pleasant. It was stressful and upsetting. But it also felt like, OK, there are big stakes here.

No. There was nothing at all at stake.  

And that does happen pretty regularly for us. We can discover that we’re not on the same page and it’s deeply upsetting. And then each of us realizes we don’t have to justify our view as much as we thought we did through the conversation. We’re trying to arrive at a shared view of the situation, but that could take a long time.

Fortunately both these cretins teach nonsense and so their arguing fills a Wisdom shaped void in their lives.  

This sounds exhausting. Maybe this constant back and forth arguing works if you’re married to another philosopher, but what’s wrong with just having a comfortable marriage?

You might end up doing something useful or realizing that you could do so by quitting your job which is to teach nonsense.  

“This is exhausting” is a response I get a lot from people, not just in terms of marriage, but also just in philosophy.

What they mean is the thing so pointless that one feels exhausted just thinking about it.  

People often ask, “When have I done enough? Can I do it for half an hour or an hour a day? Is that enough?”

People often humour a lunatic by asking such wide-eyed questions.  

But when you do more of it, you become more tolerant of it. It’s not like philosophers can handle it 100 percent of the time. I certainly can’t handle as much as Socrates did.

Because he wasn't obliged to teach shite.  

But I try to live up to the standard as much as I can, and then I will always fall short of it. But I’m not just living out my life in accordance with a script that some people handed me.

Don't live your life in accordance with a script handed out by this nutter. Find your own way of being unproductive. Take up Socioproctology. 

Dumenil & Foley's foolish Marxian Transformation Problem

 Gérard Duménil and Duncan Foley wrote

The origins of the Marxian Transformation Problem

i.e. the process of converting values, which are measures of human productive activity, into prices of production. This is easily done- at least in theory. Choose per capita GDP as the labour 'numeraire'. Actually, don't bother. Wave your hands and say it could be done and then proceed regardless. 

lie in the differences between two central abstractions of classical political economy, the labour theory of value

which is like the Allah theory of value because only Allah creates value. It is merely a shibboleth.  

and the equalization of the rate of profit through competition among capitals.

Again, just say any discrepancy is a reward for risk or else a 'rent' on entrepreneurial ability or something more sinister and oligopolistic.  

Marx proposed that these two principles could be reconciled by

hand waving. 

distinguishing the production of surplus-value through the exploitation of labour in the process of production from the realization of surplus-value through the price system,

The wage is a price. If you pay a guy less than he earns for you, you have extracted surplus value 

and claimed that the equalization of the rate of profit could be viewed as a redistribution of a given surplus-value among sectors.

In which case, profit isn't 'surplus value'. It is something 'redistributed through the price-system'. That sounds like the return to speculation. Another word for speculator is 'market maker'. Thus profits and markets exist independently of labour and surplus value.  

Marx's treatment can be seen as a generalization of the discussion of this problem in Smith and Ricardo. Modern criticisms of Marx's discussion claim that the labour theory of value is an unnecessary detour to the determination of prices and profit rates,

no great harm is done by saying Labour or Allah or Disabled Lesbians chopping off dicks are the source of all value. You can always pretend that there is a numeraire based on Labour, or God, or Wokeness or whatever. 

and that Marx's claims that total value and surplus-value are conserved when prices equalize profit rates is unfounded.

It can be rendered tautological easily enough.  

The Single System Labour Theory of Value (SS-LTV) interpretation maintains Marx’s two fundamental claims in the following formulations: (1) the price of the net product is the expression in prices (price form) of the total value-creating labour expanded during the period,

that's just GDP at factor prices.  

and (2) total profits are the price form of surplus-value, determining the value of labour-power as unallocated purchasing power (UPP) on any set of commodities workers can buy from their wages.

Workers can pay kick-backs or bribes to get particular jobs.  

These properties hold for any set of prices, not specifically prices of production. The various positions in this controversy are illustrated in a mathematical formalization

No. There is hand-waving. There is no 'mathematical formalization' because there are no well defined sets or functions.  

of the circulating capital model of production...Marx consistently distinguishes the notions of value and price, in contrast to contemporary economic language, which uses the term 'value' to refer to prices in a situation of general equilibrium, though the use of the term is rather flexible;

No. There is utility. Some consumers get 'consumer surplus' by being able to buy at a price lower than they would have been prepared to pay.  

for example 'value added' is actually the value of net product measured in price terms.

That is an accountancy term useful for calculating the yield from VAT.  

For Marx, value is a 'social substance'

just as for a devout Muslim it is what all mighty Allah has decreed 

manifested in economic relations in the 'form' of prices, though prices are not necessarily proportional to values as we will see.

Prices are what clear the market- at least in theory.  If there is too much of a thing, its price may drop to zero. 

Value and surplus-value We first recall Marx's basic concepts (see also Marx's analysis of capitalist production). Central to Marx's framework of analysis in Capital is the labour theory of value (LTV), which defines the value of a commodity as the 'socially necessary' labour time required by its  production,

Nobody knows what is 'socially necessary'. One may as well say, 'it is what all mighty Allah has decreed'.  

that is, the labour time required by average available techniques of production for workers of average skill.

Nobody knows that 'average'. We can estimate it but different people will arrive at different estimates.  

The LTV is central to Marx's theory of exploitation, a term he uses to describe a situation in which one individual or group lives on the product of the labour of others.

When can say this about everybody or anything. The guy digging coal out of the ground by the sweat of his brow is a parasite. He is dependent on the soldiers who defend the country's borders. The soldiers are parasites. They are dependent on the tax-payer. Did you know that billionaires pay more in tax than beggars? This proves we are all parasites on Oligarchs.  

According to the LTV, when commodities are exchanged through sale and purchase, no value is created.

This is obviously false. Shop keepers work hard as do 'market makers'.  

But this principle does not apply to capitalists' purchase of the labour-power of workers.

Capitalists should stop purchasing labour power. Let workers set up their own enterprises. Actually, that may be cheaper for those with lots of money.  

Workers sell their labour-power, that is, their capability to work, to a firm, owned by a capitalist. The buyer uses this labour-power in production to add value to the commodity produced. The value of labour-power is the labour time required by the production of the commodities the worker buys. But the worker can typically work more hours than are on average required to produce this bundle of commodities. For example, the goods the worker can buy may require 8 hours of labour per day, when the labour-day lasts 12 hours.

What about the cost of the machines and other tools used by the labourer? Also, is there to be no reward for the entrepreneur who takes the risk of setting up the factory or enterprise in question? Finally, there is the question of taxes- which are the price we pay for civilization. 

The difference, 4 hours, is unpaid labour time. If an hour of social labour on average produces a value whose price form is $10, 4 hours of unpaid labour time results in a surplus-value whose price form is $40, which is appropriated by the capitalist.

Which he uses to pay any rent, interest, dividends, taxes etc.  

The rate of surplus-value is the ratio of unpaid to paid labour time,

Nobody knows what that ratio is. One may as well speak of the ratio between what we do and what God does for us.  

in this case, 4/8, that is 50%.  Marx situates his discussion in the context of the distinction made by Adam Smith and David Ricardo between 'market prices' and 'natural prices'.

Market prices are knowable. Natural prices are not. Speaking mathematically, there is a lack of naturality and unicity in this field. Still, since there are no well defined sets or functions, you only have ad hoc estimates based on arbitrary stipulations. 

Market prices are the prices at which commodities actually exchange from day to day in the market. Smith and Ricardo, however, regarded market prices as fluctuating (or 'gravitating') around centres of attraction they called 'natural prices'.

We may speak of these as prices under 'Rational Expectations'- i.e. one where outcomes are equal to the prediction of the correct economic theory.  

('Gravitation' means that the economy is in a permanent situation of disequilibrium, though in a vicinity of equilibrium where natural prices would prevail.) In the above analysis, Marx assumes that commodities tend to exchange at their values (at prices proportional to values), that is, in proportion to the labour time embodied in them.

Because he was a polemicist who was pretending that evil Capitalists wearing top hats were stealing money from their workers. But one could equally say that people are only paid by God- because God is the only efficient cause. Thus any worker who is an atheist should be killed for the crime of apostacy. He is effectively stealing that which God has allotted him by falsely claiming it to be the product of his own effort. This theological point of view is superior in that God might actually exist. Atheists may burn for all eternity in hell fire. Marxism is mischievous because it implants a sense of grievance in those who work for a living. Marginalism pointed out that the marginal worker receives his marginal product. 

'Tend' means here that deviations are obviously possible, but that such prices will 'regulate' the market, in the sense that if the prevailing set of prices systematically under-compensates the labour used in the production of a commodity, labour will move to the production of better-paid commodities. As a result, the supply of the under-compensated commodity will decline, and its price will rise.

unless demand falls faster. Falling demand is what made the thing 'under-compensated' in the first place.  

In reality prices would gravitate around values, which would play the role of natural prices in such an economy. This is the commodity law of exchange.

There is no such law. Demand is exogenous and based on a changing fitness landscape reflective of changing opportunity costs. What it will be, we can only guess. It is this Risk and Uncertainty which causes entrepreneurs to earn a reward over and above any factor input of their own. Get rid of the reward, and enterprises turn into zombies.  

In a capitalist economy, however, capitalists buy not only the labour-power of workers (which Marx denotes as variable capital), but also non-labour inputs, such as raw materials, and fixed capital, such as machinery (which Marx denotes as constant capital). If natural prices were proportional to labour inputs, as the commodity law of exchange posits,

then pigs could fly. This is because hard working pigs would be able to buy jetpacks or get Tony Stark to design them an 'Iron-pig' costume. Capitalist oppression of pigs has gravely impacted their aeronautical capabilities. Amartya Sen should protest against this injustice.  

capitalists using more constant capital per worker than the average would realize smaller profit in comparison to their total capital advanced, that is, lower profit rates.

Only if their circulating capital earned the same return as less capital intensive firms. This is unlikely. Speaking generally, there is a queue for capital intensive items- e.g. ships or steam engines- whereas labour intensive goods have higher inventory and distribution costs relative to price.  

Marx accepts the idea that competition tends to equalize profit rates in various industries,

Profit is equalized on the basis of risk. Thus profit will be greater in the capital goods sector because of the 'accelerator effect' because risk is greater. It will be lower in the wage goods sector because demand is less volatile. 

despite differences in capital advanced per worker, which is the capitalist law of exchange.

But 'capital advanced per worker' is highly volatile in capital intensive enterprises. This so called 'law' is nonsense.  

Marx uses the term prices of production to describe a system of prices which guarantee to the capitalists of various industries a uniform profit rate.

There can be no such system. Why? Knightian Uncertainty. We don't know what the future will hold. We can guess and take risks but will only do so if the reward is sufficient.  

Capitalists will invest more where profit rates are larger,

No. The invest where rates are lower but less volatile. Portfolio Choice theory says you should only gamble with a small portion of your total assets. Furthermore, what is salient is 'expected profit'. But this can be affected by 'animal spirits'.  

and conversely in the symmetrical case. They move their capital from one industry to another seeking maximum profit rates,

No. They exit industries which are expected to decline and enter industries which are expected to grow rapidly. Thus people began exiting the coach building industry and entering the automobile industry because they thought the internal combustion engine would replace the horse.  

and this movement result in a gravitation of market prices around prices of production.

Because this is a 'steady state' with no innovation or exogenous shocks- e.g. Wars or Revolutions.  Marxism is a 'Classical' Economics which lost all relevance after the Industrial Revolution got off the ground. It is merely a paranoid type of polemics which states that workers are being mercilessly exploited. For a Feminist version of this theory, see here. The same argument for abolishing Capitalism can be used for the banning of such dicks as are not exclusively used for homosexual purposes. 

Positive Freedoms are a positive nuisance

 There was once an upright Judge who was Scottish. He heard of a horrible crime and said 'No Scotsman could have done this'. It turned out that the culprit was Scottish. The Judge then said the fellow wasn't a 'true' Scotsman. The moment you qualify a predicate like 'Scotsman', with another predicate like 'authentic' or 'true', it ceases to have an alethic reference. It has become an imperative statement expressive of subjective values. I may say 'a true Scotsman drinks Scotch whiskey' because I like Scottish people and love Scotch whiskey. You, on the other hand, may say 'a true Scotsman avoids alcohol. He devotes himself to Missionary work'. This is because you like Scotsmen and you also like sober, religious, people. You can point to many great Scottish missionaries and say 'those are true Scotsmen. Drunken people you see in Glasgow are actually Irish or Dutch.'

Just as there is a 'true Scotsman' fallacy, there can be a 'positive Liberty' fallacy whereby you assert that things you like are the things which a truly free person would do. Things you don't like would not be done by a truly free person. They have been constrained in some way to do the wrong thing. They are not truly free.

The problem here is that words like 'freedom', 'preference', 'rational', 'expectations' etc. are all 'epistemic' - i.e. the 'extension changes when the knowledge base changes. Thus the 'intensional fallacy' arises if they are used in a logical calculus of any type.

Still, for specific purposes they can be given a 'buck stopped' extension which is useful enough. Thus 'freedom', for the law, is a set of Hohfeldian immunities and entitlements. 'Preference' for Econ is 'revealed preference'- i.e. what people actually do. 'Rationality' may counsel 'Tardean mimetics'- i.e. imitation of what the smart people are doing. Alternatively it may mean the painstaking application of a calculus regarding 'expected utility' or, under Knightian Uncertainty, 'regret minimization'. 

Liberty means the opposite of bondage just as being alive means the opposite of being dead. In both cases, exogenous factors- outside the control of the person affected- determine if the relevant predicate applies. Moreover, these are words with a protocol bound, 'buck stopped', legal meaning.

True, one could say 'only those who martyr themselves in the righteous cause can be said to be truly alive. Anything else is spiritual death or a type of zombie existence.' Equally one might say 'true liberty is being able to serve the Benevolent Leader by mindless murdering the class enemy or the race enemy or whatever .' But anybody can talk any type of stupid shit. One can say 'the true cat is the one which says bow wow while sodomizing the Eschaton' or 'only negative felinity is achieved when pussy says miaow miaow. Positive felinity requires pussy to fuck the Eschaton in the ass while barking its head off.'

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Psilosophy says
Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints.

 And thus has no application to anything subject to gravity. But not even bosons have 'negative liberty'. Thus the thing does not exist. However, in legal terms, we might say it is the set of 'Hohfeldian immunities' the law ascribes to a particular agent. But that is a justiciable and thus defeasible matter. Essentially, a liberty is a right under a bond of law. However, if the obligation holder refuses to supply the remedy, it is ineffective. Whether or not a liberty exists depends on this exogenous factor.

A free person faces the constraint that they themselves, not some benevolent guardian, must exercise their own rights on their own behalf. This may mean that they get fewer remedies for rights' violations than a person under guardianship. 

One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense.

 No. You have an immunity to do a certain thing but may still face all sorts of obstacles or constraints. In particular, you may be worse off than a person under guardianship because you lack the resources to gain remedies to violations of your Hohfeldian immunities. Thus, the merchant who is being harassed by the tax collector may have to move to some other jurisdiction. The slave of the Sultan may have countervailing power over the tax collector. Whoever beats him,  damages the Sultan's property. The penalty for that is death. The tax collector has to stay on the slave's good side.  

Consider the people of Ukraine. They are free. But this means they have to fight Putin's goons. Had they been a client state, their Super-power master would do the fighting for them. Freedom is costly. If you can pay to maintain it, well and good. Otherwise, you might be better off as a slave or under guardianship. 

Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one’s life and realize one’s fundamental purposes.

 In other words, it is shite only narcissistic sociopaths babble about, If positive liberty is a real thing, then it would be okay to say- 'I didn't give myself permission to live my best life because I was so hung up with the way my Mother's passive aggression kept causing me to stab her and to spend all her money on drugs.'

Consider the distinction I make between negative beauty- which is the prettiness possessed by Beyonce and my own positive beauty which arises out of my body positivity and unabashed propensity to flaunt my juddering folds of fat as I traipse around the place naked while striking poses which suggest that I am actually a gorgeous maiden rather than an elderly, obese, balding man. 

In this case, most people would assume that those who describe me as having 'positive beauty' are merely virtue signalling or else making the assumption that I suffer some pitiable type of mental retardation or personality disorder. 

While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities.

 In other words, sycophantic cunts or sociopaths who get their rocks off by praising murderous Tyrants pretended that 'positive liberties' were nice whereas nobody in their right mind would want a 'negative liberty'. For example, is there a man amongst us who would deny that true freedom means chopping your dick off whereas 'negative freedom' consists of asserting the right not to undergo gender reassignment surgery?

Two Concepts of Liberty

Imagine you are driving a car through town, and you come to a fork in the road.

If you are a slave, you have no liberty. If you are not a slave, you have liberty. This is true whether or not you have a car or know how to drive.  

You turn left, but no one was forcing you to go one way or the other.

If someone was forcing you and you were his slave, then you had no liberty. But this would also be true if he wasn't forcing you.  

Next you come to a crossroads. You turn right, but no one was preventing you from going left or straight on. There is no traffic to speak of and there are no diversions or police roadblocks. So you seem, as a driver, to be completely free.

But, if you are a slave, you are not free at all.  

But this picture of your situation might change quite dramatically if we consider that the reason you went left and then right is that you’re addicted to cigarettes and you’re desperate to get to the tobacconists before it closes. Rather than driving, you feel you are being driven, as your urge to smoke leads you uncontrollably to turn the wheel first to the left and then to the right.

This is irrelevant. I may feel that I am as beautiful as Beyonce, but I am no such thing.  

Moreover, you’re perfectly aware that your turning right at the crossroads means you’ll probably miss a train that was to take you to an appointment you care about very much.

I am perfectly aware that I think I am cuter than Beyonce. Sadly, it is not an awareness shared by anyone else. 

You long to be free of this irrational desire that is not only threatening your longevity but is also stopping you right now from doing what you think you ought to be doing.

You are welcome to think of yourself as Beyonce or as the slave to Tobacco or as the Emperor of the Galaxy.  

This story gives us two contrasting ways of thinking of liberty.

No. This story shows that liberty is determined by exogenous circumstances- e.g. being a slave. It does not depend on your own subjective valuation. A Stoic who is a galley slave may think he is more free than the Emperor. But he isn't really.  

On the one hand, one can think of liberty as the absence of obstacles external to the agent.

Having the legal status of a slave is an obstacle external to the agent. Until his owner grants him manumission he is subject to all manners of external legal constraints. This is the only actual obstacle to liberty. A freeman may have no money but he has liberty. Wealth is something different from Liberty. So is Beauty and the ability to fart in a melodious manner.  

You are free if no one is stopping you from doing whatever you might want to do.

No. You may still be a slave. Your master is kind and lets you do what you like. Sadly, he dies and his heir sells you down the river.  

In the above story you appear, in this sense, to be free.

That is merely an appearance. Whether or not you are actually a free agent is a legal matter.  

On the other hand, one can think of liberty as the presence of control on the part of the agent. To be free, you must be self-determined, which is to say that you must be able to control your own destiny in your own interests.

No. A slave may be 'self-determined'. His indulgent master may let him do what he likes. But he is still a slave. A freeman may be henpecked. He does what his wife tells him to do. But he is not a slave. He has  a legal remedy against wrongful imprisonment, kidnapping, enslavement etc. 

. One might say that while on the first view liberty is simply about how many doors are open to the agent,

This is a false view. A slave with an indulgent master may have lots of doors open to him. He is still a slave. 

on the second view it is more about going through the right doors for the right reasons.

In other words, the second view is just talk. I think true liberty means chopping off your dick and balls. It is only because of Patriarchal Neo-Liberalism that decent people, like Joe Biden, haven't done so already.  

In a famous essay first published in 1958, Isaiah Berlin called these two concepts of liberty negative and positive respectively (Berlin 1969). The reason for using these labels is that in the first case liberty seems to be a mere absence of something (i.e. of obstacles, barriers, constraints or interference from others), whereas in the second case it seems to require the presence of something (i.e. of control, self-mastery, self-determination or self-realization). In Berlin’s words, we use the negative concept of liberty in attempting to answer the question “What is the area within which the subject — a person or group of persons — is or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons?”, whereas we use the positive concept in attempting to answer the question “What, or who, is the source of control or interference that can determine someone to do, or be, this rather than that?”.

Berlin didn't know about Hohfeldian incidents. He had wasted his life reading Continental philosophy. The Germans simply didn't understand, or want, liberty- unless they did in which case they fucked off to America on the first available boat.  

It is useful to think of the difference between the two concepts in terms of the difference between factors that are external and factors that are internal to the agent.

The law is external to the agent. Liberty is a set of Hohfeldian immunities under a vinculum juris.  

While theorists of negative freedom are primarily interested in the degree to which individuals or groups suffer interference from external bodies, theorists of positive freedom are more attentive to the internal factors affecting the degree to which individuals or groups act autonomously.

So the first is a positive legal theory which is useful. The second is normative bollocks. However, where a free people face a collective action problem, they are welcome to temporarily reduce the scope and scale of Hohfeldian immunities with a view to re-establishing them once the present danger has passed. 

Given this difference, one might be tempted to think that a political philosopher should concentrate exclusively on negative freedom,

A political philosopher should understand jurisprudence- i.e. the science of law- rather than just repeat stupid nonsense about Plato or Kant.  

a concern with positive freedom being more relevant to psychology or individual morality than to political and social institutions.

Nothing wrong with doing 'Welfare Econ'. But that is an empirical subject.  

This, however, would be premature, for among the most hotly debated issues in political philosophy are the following: Is the positive concept of freedom a political concept?

Yes- a shit one.  

Can individuals or groups achieve positive freedom through political action?

They can solve collective action problems- though they can also fuck up the country.  

Is it possible for the state to promote the positive freedom of citizens on their behalf?

The State is welcome to promote Welfare.  

And if so, is it desirable for the state to do so? The classic texts in the history of western political thought are

shit 

divided over how these questions should be answered: theorists in the classical liberal tradition, like Benjamin Constant, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Herbert Spencer, and J.S. Mill, are typically classed as answering ‘no’ and therefore as defending a negative concept of political freedom;

Nothing prevents free agents from 'risk pooling'- i.e. having collective insurance schemes of various types. There are 'non-convexities'- e.g. economies of scope and scale- and 'externalities' which militate for this. As positive economics developed tools to represent this, public policy could be greatly improved.  

theorists that are critical of this tradition, like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx and T.H. Green, are typically classed as answering ‘yes’ and as defending a positive concept of political freedom.

That didn't work out well at all.  

In its political form, positive freedom has often been thought of as necessarily achieved through a collectivity.

Collective action problems can be solved collectively- though shitty ideologies can worsen matters greatly.  

Perhaps the clearest case is that of Rousseau’s theory of freedom, according to which individual freedom is achieved through participation in the process whereby one’s community exercises collective control over its own affairs in accordance with the ‘general will’.

It is fair to say that taxes are the price you pay for civilization. Civil Law is expensive but it can provide remedies for rights' violations. Who knows when any of us may be in need of them? However, there is no need for us to 'participate' very much in any processes. The theory of comparative advantage applies. Let a few people specialize in the law, others in public policy, others in Economics etc. Being able to vote gives us some countervailing power over those who wield power.  

Put in the simplest terms, one might say that a democratic society is a free society

unless it is conquered and enslaved. Throughout history, a 'free society' is one which, as part of a coalition, can kick the ass of invaders or crazy insurrectionists.  

because it is a self-determined society, and that a member of that society is free to the extent that he or she participates in its democratic process.

That does not follow. I am very beautiful whether or not I participate in the Miss Teen Tamil Nadu Beauty pageant. Equally, some of the actual participants may not be beautiful at all. Instead they may have remarkable talents or may have shown extraordinary courage or perseverance. We may find more beauty in a girl from a poor family who lost her legs but who still trained as a Bharatnatyam dances than in a pretty girl who was born with a silver spoon. Nevertheless, few can deny that I am more beautiful that either. The only reason I am not allowed to participate in the Beauty contest is because of anti-Iyer prejudice. 

But there are also individualist applications of the concept of positive freedom.

No. There are policy choices which can enhance welfare. It is mere 'puffery' to speak grandiosely of welfare improvements as enhancements of freedom or liberty or the capacity to live a truly Aryan life.  

For example, it is sometimes said that a government should aim actively to create the conditions necessary for individuals to be self-sufficient or to achieve self-realization.

The Government should certainly aim to keep invaders from enslaving the population. There are various other collective action problems which Governments, throughout history, have been solving- or trying to solve.  

The welfare state has sometimes been defended on this basis,

Defended from whom? Adolf Hitler? Did political philosophers parachute into Berlin to beat that fucker up?  

as has the idea of a universal basic income.

Which some Islamic autocrats may provide their indigenous subjects more lavishly than any Democracy.  

The negative concept of freedom, on the other hand, is most commonly assumed in liberal defences of the constitutional liberties typical of liberal-democratic societies, such as freedom of movement, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech,

these are Hohfeldian immunities.  

and in arguments against paternalist or moralist state intervention. It is also often invoked in defences of the right to private property. This said, some philosophers have contested the claim that private property necessarily enhances negative liberty (Cohen 1995, 2006),

Because there is no such thing. There are immunities but enforcing them costs money and thus State protection for immunities may taper off at the margin.

and still others have tried to show that negative liberty can ground a form of egalitarianism (Steiner 1994).

Only in the sense that flying unicorns can ground anything you like. 

The Paradox of Positive Liberty

Many liberals, including Berlin, have suggested that the positive concept of liberty carries with it a danger of authoritarianism.

Only in the sense that the positive concept of flying unicorns carries with it the danger that such beasts may shit on your head when you go for a walk in the park. 

For authoritarianism to exist, those who resist it must be killed, incarcerated or exiled.  

Consider the fate of a permanent and oppressed minority.

It may have no legal immunities.  

Because the members of this minority participate in a democratic process characterized by majority rule, they might be said to be free on the grounds that they are members of a society exercising self-control over its own affairs.

Not if they have zero 'Shapley value'- i.e. can't alter any political outcomes.  

But they are oppressed, and so are surely unfree.

A free person may be oppressed. A slave may not be.  

Moreover, it is not necessary to see a society as democratic in order to see it as self-controlled;

Or to see it as 'self controlled', if it is as poor as shit and has to do whatever its super-power sponsor demands.  

one might instead adopt an organic conception of society, according to which the collectivity is to be thought of as a living organism,

like a cat 

and one might believe that this organism will only act rationally,

cats frequently act irrationality. That is their charm. 

will only be in control of itself, when its various parts are brought into line with some rational plan devised by its wise governors (who, to extend the metaphor, might be thought of as the organism’s brain).

Living organisms don't behave in that way. Robots might. This isn't an 'organicist' view. It is cybernetic.  

In this case, even the majority might be oppressed in the name of liberty.

Only in the sense that the majority may be a flying unicorn oppressed in the name of Liberace.  

Such justifications of oppression in the name of liberty are no mere products of the liberal imagination, for there are notorious historical examples of their endorsement by authoritarian political leaders.

Even more notoriously, those authoritarian leaders were often emulating policies formulated in 'Liberal' Democracies. Hitler was merely applying to White people of a different heritage, the same policies Woodrow Wilson championed against 'one drop' African Americans. 

Berlin, himself a liberal and writing during the cold war, was clearly moved by the way in which the apparently noble ideal of freedom as self-mastery or self-realization

i.e. worthless verbiage indulged in by stupid Teutonic pedants 

had been twisted and distorted by the totalitarian dictators of the twentieth century — most notably those of the Soviet Union —

The Soviets did to class enemies what 'Democratic' Americans had done to indigenous and African American people.  

so as to claim that they, rather than the liberal West, were the true champions of freedom.

Which was true enough if you were an Arab Algerian or, indeed, an African American like W.E.B Dubois who ended his life renouncing American citizenship and joining the Communist party. The plain fact is, the Soviets backed majority rule in South Africa at a time when Reagan and Thatcher were propping up the apartheid state.  

The slippery slope towards this paradoxical conclusion

It was simply a fact that the US was racist and propped up right wing dictators so as to further the interests of private Corporations like the United Fruit Company. Allende was popular. Pinochet was not. The US supported Pinochet against Allende. 

The justification the Soviets gave for their Gulags was that the Capitalists were trying to overthrow their regime. But this was the truth. It wasn't the product of some logical fallacy or 'slippery slope' towards a pathological outcome.  

begins, according to Berlin, with the idea of a divided self. To illustrate: the smoker in our story provides a clear example of a divided self, for she is both a self that desires to get to an appointment and a self that desires to get to the tobacconists, and these two desires are in conflict.

Whatever she does is the result of having a unified self. It is only if she develops multiple personalities that we could say she has a divided self.  

We can now enrich this story in a plausible way by adding that one of these selves — the keeper of appointments — is superior to the other: the self that is a keeper of appointments is thus a ‘higher’ self, and the self that is a smoker is a ‘lower’ self.

Only in the sense that we could say that our higher self is a flying unicorn while our lower self is a porpoise who has moved to Paraguay to set up as commercial practice as a consulting actuary. 

The higher self is the rational, reflecting self, the self that is capable of moral action and of taking responsibility for what she does.

Also it can fly around the place shooting rainbows out of its butt 

This is the true self,

no true self is not a flying unicorn. Wake up sheeple! Overcome your lower self and fly through the sky shooting rainbows out of your butt.  

for rational reflection and moral responsibility are the features of humans that mark them off from other animals.

Which is why pedants teaching shite of this sort can't be human. This is because they are actually flying unicorns. 

The lower self, on the other hand, is the self of the passions, of unreflecting desires and irrational impulses. One is free, then, when one’s higher, rational self is in control and

one is flying around in the sky shooting rainbows out of your butt.  

one is not a slave to one’s passions or to one’s merely empirical self.

Because, empirically, you aren't a flying unicorn. That's why empiricism is stoooopid.  

The next step down the slippery slope consists in pointing out that some individuals are more rational than others, and can therefore know best what is in their and others’ rational interests.

This can be certified to be the case by a professional association. Courts may appoint such people as guardians for those who lack competency.  

This allows them to say that by forcing people less rational than themselves to do the rational thing and thus to realize their true selves, they are in fact liberating them from their merely empirical desires.

There is no need to make such a grandiose claim. It is enough to show that the outcome, for a person under Guardianship, is better than would otherwise have been the case. This is an ideographic legal, not a nomothetic philosophical, matter. 

Occasionally, Berlin says, the defender of positive freedom will take an additional step that consists in conceiving of the self as wider than the individual and as represented by an organic social whole — “a tribe, a race, a church, a state, the great society of the living and the dead and the yet unborn”. The true interests of the individual are to be identified with the interests of this whole, and individuals can and should be coerced into fulfilling these interests, for they would not resist coercion if they were as rational and wise as their coercers. “Once I take this view”, Berlin says, “I am in a position to ignore the actual wishes of men or societies, to bully, oppress, torture in the name, and on behalf, of their ‘real’ selves, in the secure knowledge that whatever is the true goal of man ... must be identical with his freedom” 

Why take this view? You can ignore anything you like without taking any fucking view whatsoever. It simply isn't the case that having a view of any sort is causally connected with anything else whatsoever. It is a different matter that there may be correlation. But correlation is not causation.  

Those in the negative camp try to cut off this line of reasoning at the first step, by denying that there is any necessary relation between one’s freedom and one’s desires. Since one is free to the extent that one is externally unprevented from doing things, they say, one can be free to do what one does not desire to do. If being free meant being unprevented from realizing one’s desires, then one could, again paradoxically, reduce one’s unfreedom by coming to desire fewer of the things one is unfree to do. One could become free simply by contenting oneself with one’s situation. A perfectly contented slave is perfectly free to realize all of her desires.

But not the desire not to desire not desiring or other such shite. The plain fact is 'perfectly contented' just means 'contented'. 'Perfectly free' just means free. A contented person my be a slave. A free person may be discontented. One could say 'perfect contentment is the perfect freedom to fly around in the sky shooting rainbows out of one's butt.'                    

Nevertheless, we tend to think of slavery as the opposite of freedom.

Because it is.  

More generally, freedom is not to be confused with happiness, for in logical terms there is nothing to stop a free person from being unhappy or an unfree person from being happy.

There may be. Some people may only be happy if they are a slave. Others can't be happy unless they receive manumission or, if minors, are 'emancipated'.  

The happy person might feel free, but whether they are free is another matter (Day, 1970). Negative theorists of freedom therefore tend to say not that having freedom means being unprevented from doing as one desires, but that it means being unprevented from doing whatever one might desire to do 

Which is why nobody is free. This is because they might want to fly in the sky shooting rainbows out of their butt.  

Some theorists of positive freedom bite the bullet and say that the contented slave is indeed free

in the past, some people subjected themselves to castration and sold themselves as slaves to the Sultan. Some such gained great wealth and political power.  

— that in order to be free the individual must learn, not so much to dominate certain merely empirical desires, but to rid herself of them.

Others go further. A slave can learn Magic and turn into a flying unicorn.  

She must, in other words, remove as many of her desires as possible. As Berlin puts it, if I have a wounded leg ‘there are two methods of freeing myself from pain. One is to heal the wound. But if the cure is too difficult or uncertain, there is another method. I can get rid of the wound by cutting off my leg’ (1969, pp. 135–36).

Berlin was notorious for constantly chopping bits of himself in the faculty lounge.  

This is the strategy of liberation adopted by ascetics, stoics and Buddhist sages.

and is similar to the strategy used by magicians to turn themselves into flying unicorns.  

It involves a ‘retreat into an inner citadel’ — a soul or a purely noumenal self — in which the individual is immune to any outside forces.

Including death. In India you will find plenty of Yogi-bhogis who claim to be ten thousand years old. Then they die of syphilis or medical complications linked to obesity.  

John Christman  has argued that positive liberty concerns the ways in which desires are formed — whether as a result of rational reflection on all the options available, or as a result of pressure, manipulation or ignorance.

This is nonsense. Desires are formed mimetically. Rational reflection is mimetic. However, it is the fitness landscape which weeds out desires which don't promote evolutionarily stable strategies.  

What it does not regard, he says, is the content of an individual’s desires.

Because what does not exist does not regard anything at all.  

The promotion of positive freedom need not therefore involve the claim that there is only one right answer to the question of how a person should live, nor need it allow, or even be compatible with, a society forcing its members into given patterns of behavior.

Which is why the 'positive freedom' to drive a car which you gain when you get a driving licence permits you to drive on the wrong side of the road while drunk- right?  

Take the example of a Muslim woman

Woman have to sit down to pee. They are unfairly denied a positive freedom greatly enjoyed by men some of whom can even sign their names on snow using just their urine.  

who claims to espouse the fundamentalist doctrines generally followed by her family and the community in which she lives. On Christman’s account, this person is positively unfree if her desire to conform was somehow oppressively imposed upon her

in the same way that a vagina, rather than a penis, was unfairly imposed upon her 

through indoctrination, manipulation or deceit.

Did you know that Patriarchy brainwashes women into thinking they can't grow a dick?  

She is positively free, on the other hand, if she arrived at her desire to conform while aware of other reasonable options and she weighed and assessed these other options rationally.

Similarly, a dead person is positively alive if she arrives at her desire to remain a corpse while aware of other reasonable options- e.g. becoming a Zombie or a Vampire.  

Even if this woman seems to have a preference for subservient behavior, there is nothing necessarily freedom-enhancing or freedom-restricting about her having the desires she has, since freedom regards not the content of these desires but their mode of formation.

Which is why dead people are only dead because they rationally reject the option to become a zombie  

On this view, forcing her to do certain things rather than others can never make her more free,

This is obviously false. Forcing a person to escape from her captors makes her more free.  

and Berlin’s paradox of positive freedom would seem to have been avoided.

There was no paradox. It is an alethic matter as to whether a woman forced to leave her cage and run away to the nearest police station has become more or less free. True, you may be charged with having threatened her with a gun. That is a separate matter.  

This more ‘procedural’ account of positive liberty allows us to point to kinds of internal constraint that seem too fall off the radar if we adopt only negative concept.

It allows us to talk bollocks.  

For example, some radical political theorists believe it can help us to make sense of forms of oppression and structural injustice that cannot be traced to overt acts of prevention or coercion.

because they are a paranoid fantasy.  

On the one hand, in agreement with Berlin, we should recognize the dangers of that come with promoting the values or interests of a person’s ‘true self’ in opposition to what they manifestly desire.

There is no great danger in doing so provided you aren't financially exploiting or sexually abusing them or telling them you can enable them to turn into immortal flying unicorns.  

Thus, the procedural account avoids all reference to a ‘true self’.

Yet, we have a true self. I am an elderly, hideously ugly, Tambram named Vivek. It isn't true that I am a comely African American super-star named Beyonce.  A 'procedural account'- e.g. one given by a Police detective- would reveal this true self of mine. On that basis, I may be obliged to stop trying to market my tell-all book 'Beyonce- my life as a Cost & Management Accountant'. 

On the other, we should recognize that people’s actual selves are inevitably formed in a

particular womb.  

social context

nope. My 'actual self' didn't change when we moved from Germany to India or from India to Iraq or from Iraq to Kenya. Even becoming a British citizen didn't change my 'actual self' even though many of my relatives began to mistake me for the late Queen, Gorbless'er. 

and that their values and senses of identity (for example, in terms of gender or race or nationality) are shaped by cultural influences. In this sense, the self is ‘socially constructed’,

i.e. the same sense in which the self is the fart of a flying unicorn  

and this social construction can itself occur in oppressive ways.

Flying unicorn may fart in an oppressive rather than submissive manner.  

The challenge, then, is to show how a person’s values can be thus shaped but without

the intervention of malign flying unicorns. But, if you think this is a 'challenge', you will think tying your own shoe-laces a task impossible for even the Olympian Gods.  

the kind of oppressive imposition or manipulation that comes not only from political coercion but also, more subtly, from

the metaphysical farts of flying unicorns 

practices or institutions that stigmatize or marginalize certain identities

e.g. elderly onanistic Iyers as opposed to beautiful maidens earning big bucks by pleasuring themselves on 'Only Fans'.  

or that attach costs to the endorsement of values deviating from acceptable norms, for these kinds of imposition or manipulation can be just another way of promoting a substantive ideal of the self.

There is no need for such an 'ideal'. Substantively, a particular self is linked to one and only one physical body. You are welcome to say that flying unicorns have fabricated that self and that Neo-Liberal Patriarchy has brainwashed it into finding naked young women, but not elderly men, attractive, but we are welcome to think you are mad, stupid or teach worthless shite. 

And this was exactly the danger against which Berlin was warning,

a wholly imaginary danger. 

except that the danger is less visible and can be created unintentionally 

by the farts of flying unicorns. 

Consider the following 

G.A. Cohen famously focused on the case proletarians who can escape their condition by successfully setting up a business of their own though a mixture of hard work and luck. In such cases, while each individual member of the disadvantaged group might be negatively free in the sense of being unprevented from choosing the path of liberation, the freedom of the individual is conditional on the unfreedom of the majority of the rest of the group, since not all can escape in this way. Each individual member of the class therefore partakes in a form of collective negative unfreedom

Children are not free. True, some children grow up and become adults and thus become free. But this does not alter the unfreedom of children. Indeed, some ex-children have babies thus contributing to unfreedom. How is this fair? 

The counterargument is that being a child or being an employee is not a 'disadvantage'. True, some people want to stop being kids or being employees. Others might have no choice in the matter. My employer goes bankrupt. I am forced to become a self-employed contractor. I even have to take on employees of my own. I am miserable because I am now carrying more risk and a bigger 'compliance' burden. That's why I keep sending out resumes. One day I bump into my old manager at the pub. He has a job with a good Company. He says he could use me on his team. The pay is the same as in my old job. I jump at it. 

What of 'republican freedom'? Americans have it. Canadians don't. Does this matter in the slightest? No.

Republican freedom can be thought of as a kind of status:

So can being the fart of a flying unicorn 

to be a free person is to enjoy the rights and privileges attached to the status of republican citizenship,

No. To be a free person is to actually be free. An American citizen who is incarcerated is not free.  

whereas the paradigm of the unfree person is the slave.

America was a Republic which had slavery. England was a Kingdom which did not.  

Freedom is not simply a matter of non-interference, for a slave may enjoy a great deal of non-interference at the whim of her master. What makes her unfree is

the fact that she can be bought and sold 

her status,

Nope. If she can be bought and sold, her status is irrelevant. Some White Americans were enslaved by corsairs in Tripoli.  

such that she is permanently exposed to interference of any kind.

A free person may be permanently exposed to interference more particularly if they have a hot bod. Sadly nobody wants to interfere with me.  

Even if the slave enjoys non-interference, she is, as Pettit puts it, ‘dominated’, because she is permanently subject to the arbitrary power of her owner.

We are all 'dominated'. Sovereign Republics have just as much 'Herrschaft' as Kingdoms. 

According to Pettit, then, republicans conceive of freedom not as non-interference, as on the standard negative view, but as ‘non-domination’.

Some may, others may not. Germans distinguish between Herrschaft and Gewalt. But such terms are foreign to English speaking people. We speak of sovereignty and consider it to be founded upon the people as a whole. It makes little difference whether we see the People empower the 'Crown in Parliament' or that they give themselves Republican institutions. 

Non-domination is distinct from negative freedom, he says, for two reasons.

Nonsensical reasons distinguish between different varieties of nonsense. 

First, as we have seen, one can enjoy non-interference without enjoying non-domination.

Only in the sense that we can enjoy not being shat on by flying unicorns while ourselves being but the fart of such creatures.  

Second, one can enjoy non-domination while nevertheless being interfered with,

very true. A lot of people who are being tortured by maniacs greatly enjoy 'non-domination'.  

just as long as the interference in question is constrained to track one’s avowed interests thanks to republican power structures:

Hitler kept Weimar 'power structures'. I suppose his goons could claim to 'track the avowed interests' of the German people.  

only arbitrary power is inimical to freedom, not power as such.

No. Power, arbitrary or not, can be inimical to anything and everything worthwhile if it is used to do stupid shit.  

On the other hand, republican freedom is also distinct from positive freedom as expounded and criticized by Berlin.

A republic may be despotic. It may do very stupid shit indeed.  

First, republican freedom does not consist in the activity of virtuous political participation; rather, that participation is seen as instrumentally related to freedom as non-domination.

Who sees it that way? Only stupid pedants who talk bollocks.  

Secondly, the republican concept of freedom cannot lead to anything like the oppressive consequences feared by Berlin,

Sure it can. Any concept of freedom is compatible with doing stupid shit with the result that there is an invasion or crazy nutters take over the country.  

because it has a commitment to non-domination and to liberal-democratic institutions already built into it.

Adultery does not exist because married people have made a commitment to be faithful. How fucking stupid are these pedants?  

Pettit’s idea of freedom as non domination has caught the imagination of a great many political theorists over the last two decades.

There are few political theorists because they are stupid and useless. They get paid to teach 'Grievance Studies' to psychotic imbeciles.  

One source of its popularity lies in the fact that it seems to make sense of the phenomena of oppression and structural injustice referred to above, but without necessarily relying on references to internal constraints.

i.e. if all women are incessantly being raped, decapitated and subjected to body shaming, this isn't because women are weak and stupid. Rather the fault lies with Patriarchal Neo-Liberalism and the fact that Turtle Island is being illegally occupied. 

It has been applied not only to relations of domination between governments and citizens, but also to relations of domination between employers and workers (Breen and McBride 2015), between husbands and wives (Lovett forthcoming), and between able-bodied and disabled people (De Wispelaere and Casassas 2011)

 Also humans and animals and living people as opposed to dead people.  Anyone can have a grievance against anything. If women start banging on about how they are all being incessantly raped, men can start banging on about how the Moon has filed false rape charges against my ginormous dick which keeps jizzing on its face. 

While there is no necessary connection between negative liberty and democratic government, there may nevertheless be a strong empirical correlation between the two.

Unless the democracy does stupid shit or can't protect itself from a more powerful invader.  

Ian Carter (1999, 2008), Matthew H. Kramer (2003, 2008), and Robert Goodin and Frank Jackson (2007) have argued, along these lines, that republican policies are best defended empirically on the basis of the standard negative ideal of freedom, rather than on the basis of a conceptual challenge to that ideal.

Very true. That's what Zelensky is doing. He hired some political philosophers because they would provide his country with its best possible defence. 

The plain fact is that pedants have no power. Also 'empirical correlation' just means p-hacking & drive-by regression- i.e. it is junk econometrics.  

An important premise in such an argument is that the extent of a person’s negative freedom is a function not simply of how many single actions are prevented, but of how many different act-combinations are prevented. On this basis, people who can achieve their goals only by bowing and scraping to their masters must be seen as less free, negatively, than people who can achieve those goals unconditionally.

This is a crazy view. A guy who becomes a billionaire and who gains vast political power by 'bowing and scraping' isn't less free than a guy who has been wrongfully imprisoned. 

Still, the 'Grievance Studies' view is that women have to keep bowing and scraping to men because vast numbers of invisible cocks are incessantly sodomizing them and jizzing on their tits. Wake up sheeple! That's how Neo-Liberalism works. 

Another important premise is that the extent to which people are negatively free depends, in part, on the probability with which they will be constrained from performing future acts or act-combinations.

This is a function of the resources available to those with a motive to do the constraining. It is exogenous.  

People who are subject to arbitrary power can be seen as less free in the negative sens

only if 'arbitrary power' has the resources and motivation to 'interfere'. But little by way of extra resources is required to change an arbitrary procedure into one which is lawful and protocol bound.  

even if they do not actually suffer interference, because the probability of their suffering constraints is always greater (ceteris paribus, as a matter of empirical fact)

No. Ceteris paribus, it is less because lawful interference is associated with a public signal re. probability which itself affects expectations. Saying 'ceteris paribus' doesn't make you an economist. There is a good reason why enterprises want to act in protocol bound ways such that there are good public signals, promoting better correlated equilibria, which themselves affect expectations and thus become at least partly 'self-fulfilling'. 

A sufficiently arbitrary action fits no pattern. It has no expected probability distribution.  

than it would be if they were not subject to that arbitrary power.

We are all subject to arbitrary physical and chemical and biological processes. Smart arbitrary power is better than stupid, protocol bound, power. However, the latter can always legitimate the former by a capacious doctrine of political question or executive immunity.  

Only this greater probability, they say, can adequately explain republican references to the ‘fear’, the ‘sense of exposure’, and the ‘precariousness’ of the dominated (for further discussion see Bruin 2009, Lang 2012, Shnayderman 2012, Kirby 2016, Carter and Shnayderman 2019).

Nope. That is 'Grievance Studies' shite. Everybody pretends they are subject to incessant epistemic rape, decapitation, body shaming, piracy, genocide, and littering.  

In reply to the above point about the relevance of probabilities, republicans have insisted that freedom as non-domination is nevertheless distinct from negative liberty because what matters for an agent’s freedom is the impossibility of others interfering, not the mere improbability of their doing so.

It is impossible that some dude runs you over with his car or another dude knifes you and runs away with your wallet. 

Consider the example of gender relations with the context of marriage. A husband might be kind and generous, or indeed have a strong sense of egalitarian justice, and therefore be extremely unlikely ever to deny his wife the same opportunities as he himself enjoys; but the wife is still dominated if the structure of norms in her society is such as to permit husbands to frustrate the choices of their wives in numerous ways.

Especially her choice to fuck the hockey team. But if women say marriage is rape, men may reply that it is enslavement. Baby then denounces both parents as Nazis. The puppy dog says 'woof woof, canines are oppressed, woof woof'.  

If she lives in such a society, she is still subject to the husband’s power whether he likes it or not. And whether the husband likes it or not, the wife’s subjection to his power will tend to influence how third parties treat her – for example, in terms of offering employment opportunities.

Pimps may fight shy of offering her clients if they think she has a husband who will kick their fucking head in. 

The plain fact is, genuine grievances exist- e.g. some wives really are being battered. By pretending that all women are raped, battered, decapitated, subjected to piracy, genocide and body shaming, nothing good is achieved. The fact is pedants ought not to be in the business of competing with lunatics. The lunatics can do the thing better.  

Taken at face value, however, the requirement of impossibility of interference seems over demanding, as it is never completely impossible for others to constrain me. It is not impossible that I be stabbed by someone as I walk down the street this afternoon.

Not if you are carrying a Kalashnikov.  

Indeed, the possible world in which this event occurs is very close to the actual world, even if the event is improbable in the actual world.

It is improbable in a state with 'open carry' where the average citizen is 'locked and loaded'.  

If the mere possibility of the stabbing makes me unfree to walk down the street, then unfreedom is everywhere and the achievement of freedom is itself virtually impossible. To avoid this worry, republicans have qualified their impossibility requirement: for me to be free to walk down the street, it must be impossible for others to stab me with impunity (Pettit 2008a, 2008b; Skinner 2008).

Getting shot means you can't attempt a stabbing with impunity.  

This qualification makes the impossibility requirement more realistic. Nevertheless, the qualification is open to objections. Is ‘impunity’ a purely formal requirement, or should we say that no one can carry out a street stabbing with impunity if, say, at least 70% of such stabbings lead to prosecution? Even if 100% of such stabbings lead to prosecution, there will still be some stabbings.

There will be none if would be stabbers keeping getting shot in the head.  

Will they not be sources of unfreedom for the victims?

No. Free people can get stabbed. But if they are free to shoot stabbers, they won't be.  

More recently some republicans have sidelined the notion of impunity of interference in favour of that of ‘ignorability’ of interference (Ingham and Lovett 2019).

We already ignore these nutters. Nothing more is needed. 

I am free to make certain choices if

you are in fact free to make them 

the structure of effective societal norms, whether legal or customary, is such as to constrain the ability of anyone else to frustrate those choices,

i.e. you are in fact free to make them because Society stops anyone who tries to stop you doing so 

to the point where the possibility of such frustration, despite existing, is remote enough to be something I can ignore.

because you are free to make choices. True, an invisible flying unicorn may shit on you, but you can safely ignore this possibility. 

Still, for most choices, Society does not matter. Economic or physical constraints of an ideographic type are what determine if you can make certain choices.  

I suppose one might say, from a legal point of view. You are free to make a choice iff it is intra vires for you to do so- i.e. you have a Hohfeldian immunity in that respect. However, this is a justiciable and hence defeasible matter.  

Once I can ignore that possibility, then the structure of effective norms makes me safe by removing any sense of exposure to interference.

That may be an illusory sense of safety. The fact is people like Jeffery Epstein and Harvey Weinstein thought they were safe to act in a certain way. Then it became clear that what they were doing was ab ovo illegal and highly repugnant. It is not that societal norms or laws had changed. It is just that those evil bastards were wrong about what was legal and what Society would accept.  

Defenders of the negative concept of liberty might respond to this move by saying that the criterion of ignorability looks very much like a criterion of trivially low probability:

it is a criteria of ignorance, not ignorability.  

we consider ourselves free to do x to the extent that the system of enforced norms deters others’ prevention of x in such a way as to make that prevention improbable.

No. This is decision theory under imperfect information. Prudence requires to gain reasonable certification that you are acting intra vires.

The jury is still out

of its mind 

on whether republicans have successfully carved out a third concept of freedom that is really distinct from those of negative and positive liberty.

Negative liberty could, charitably, to be said to be Hohfeldian immunities. Positive freedoms could plausibly be linked to higher Human Development achieved through dictatorial means which nevertheless might be said to reflect the 'General Will'. But this republican site is just ignorant shite. 

This conceptual uncertainty need not itself cast doubt on the distinctness and attractiveness of republicanism as a set of political prescriptions.

Quacks offering prescriptions need to make some minimal effort to appear bright. These guys haven't bothered to do so.  

Rather, what it leaves open is the question of the ultimate normative bases of those prescriptions: is ‘non-domination’ something that supervenes on certain configurations of negative freedom and unfreedom,

Can negative freedoms have a 'configuration space'. If so, is it 'unrestricted'? Then, we could speak of supervenience. The problem is that Hohfeldian immunities are defeasible and thus can't have 'generalized coordinates'. So it can't be a coordination space or a supervenience relationship. Thus either negative freedoms can't have a Hohfeldian representation and thus are beyond the scope of jurisprudence- or else claims about them are non informative. They may have some imperative force but so can saying 'invisible flying unicorns shit in the mouth of you, you stupid liar, whose pants are on fire.' 

and therefore explainable in terms of such configurations, or is it something truly distinct from those configurations?

It is nonsense. 

What about MacCallum's 'triadic conception of freedom?

One Concept of Liberty: Freedom as a Triadic Relation

The two sides identified by Berlin disagree over which of two different concepts best captures the political ideal of ‘liberty’.

That ideal is captured by political manifestos or constitutional documents- e.g. the Bill of Rights.  

Does this fact not denote the presence of some more basic agreement between the two sides?

I suppose both would agree that they had no power and that the kids they were teaching considered them to be useless shitheads. As the Chinese say, 'Science students look down on Arts students. Arts students look down on students of Politics who, in turn, look down on their teachers.  

How, after all, could they see their disagreement as one about the nature of liberty if they did not think of themselves as in some sense talking about the same thing?

They were talking about Welfare and how to solve collective action problems so as to increase it.  

In an influential article, the American legal philosopher Gerald MacCallum (1967) put forward the following answer: there is in fact only one basic concept of freedom, on which both sides in the debate converge.

He was obviously wrong. One side thought History had a Telelogy- a direction. Freedom meant choosing to be on the right side of history. Slavery meant remaining in thrall to bourgeois idealism or feudal superstitions or 'the opium of the masses'. The other side thought freedom was the birth-right of White Anglo Saxon males though, for the nonce, we might have to pretend that women and darkies too could profit from it. 

What the so-called negative and positive theorists disagree about is how this single concept of freedom should be interpreted. Indeed, in MacCallum’s view, there are a great many different possible interpretations of freedom, and it is only Berlin’s artificial dichotomy that has led us to think in terms of there being two.

MacCallum defines the basic concept of freedom — the concept on which everyone agrees — as follows: a subject, or agent, is free from certain constraints, or preventing conditions, to do or become certain things.

This certainly applies to trees and bushes. It does not apply to human beings. Freedom, as a concept, developed as the opposite of slavery.  

Freedom is therefore a triadic relation — that is, a relation between three things: an agent, certain preventing conditions, and certain doings or becomings of the agent.

I am an agent. I am free. My age and gender prevents my giving birth to a bouncing baby. This does not change the fact that I am free. Suppose I were kidnapped and subjected to surgery such that a womb is implanted in me and I do in fact give birth to a baby. I have not gained any 'positive freedom'. I am not free. I am the captive of a maniac.  

Any statement about freedom or unfreedom can be translated into a statement of the above form by specifying what is free or unfree, from what it is free or unfree, and what it is free or unfree to do or become.

This tree is free. It is free from interference by lumberjacks. It is free to grow taller or, if such is its inclination, turn into a flying unicorn.' You may say, 'trees can't become flying unicorns'. Buy you might also say 'Niggers can't become POTUS. Their brains are too small'. Sadly, you may be right if you say 'Women can't become POTUS.' The plain fact is, freedom does not involve any arbitrary claim as to what those exercising it can do or become. 

Any claim about the presence or absence of freedom in a given situation will therefore

be stupid shit unless it is being made by a politician or lawyer acting in a professional capacity 

make certain assumptions about what counts as an agent, what counts as a constraint or limitation on freedom, and what counts as a purpose that the agent can be described as either free or unfree to carry out.

The definition of freedom as a triadic relation was first put forward in the seminal work of Felix Oppenheim in the 1950s and 60s. Oppenheim saw that an important meaning of ‘freedom’ in the context of political and social philosophy was as a relation between two agents and a particular (impeded or unimpeded) action. However, Oppenheim’s interpretation of freedom was an example of what Berlin would call a negative concept. What MacCallum did was to generalize this triadic structure so that it would cover all possible claims about freedom, whether of the negative or the positive variety. In MacCallum’s framework, unlike in Oppenheim’s, the interpretation of each of the three variables is left open. In other words, MacCallum’s position is a meta-theoretical one: his is a theory about the differences between theorists of freedom.

But it fails immediately. Why? Because of the 'intensional fallacy'. Whether an action is considered to be free or constrained depends on the knowledge base. It is epistemic. When I was a kid, a boy in my class was punished because, very naughtily, he continued to make spelling mistakes. Nothing of the sort would now occur because teachers know about dyslexia. 

Suppose all out nuclear war breaks out. The handful of survivors would agree that those who campaigned for unilateral nuclear disarmament were the true defenders of liberty.  On the other hand, Ukrainians today may feel that the decision to give up nuclear weapons has endangered the liberty of millions of their fellow citizens. 

To illustrate MacCallum’s point, let us return to the example of the smoker driving to the tobacconists. In describing this person as either free or unfree, we shall be

talking stupid bollocks. One might as well speak of him as the fart of purple, rather than an turquoise, flying unicorn.  

making assumptions about each of MacCallum’s three variables. If we say that the driver is free, what we shall probably mean is that an agent, consisting in the driver’s empirical self, is free from external (physical or legal) obstacles to do whatever he or she might want to do.

Fuck off! The fact that he is driving means he can't teleport, much though he might want to. Also, it may be that his driving license has expired. He himself may be unaware of this fact. 

If, on the other hand, we say that the driver is unfree, what we shall probably mean is that an agent, consisting in a higher or rational self, is made unfree by internal, psychological constraints to carry out some rational, authentic or virtuous plan.

he is under hypnosis, or is actually a robot or is the slave of the Sultan of Catarrh.  

Notice that in both claims there is

nothing authoritative or informative or sensible.  

a negative element and a positive element: each claim about freedom assumes both that freedom is freedom from something (i.e., preventing conditions) and that it is freedom to do or become something.

No. One may be free from life and yet be driving a car. One is also free to do impossible things. Freedom is an intension whose extension is unknown. Whatever extension, on the basis of our present knowledge, we assign to it, we are bound to be wrong in some respect. Still, Courts can provide good enough 'buck stopped' extensions while Philosophy can just stand around with its thumb up its ass.  

The dichotomy between ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to’ is therefore a false one,

It is good enough. We may say, 'our people have achieved freedom from want but much remains to be done so that they have the freedom to lives of opulence. 

and it is misleading to say that those who see the driver as free employ a negative concept and those who see the driver as unfree employ a positive one. What these two camps differ over is the way in which one should interpret each of the three variables in the triadic freedom-relation. More precisely, we can see that what they differ over is the extension to be assigned to each of the variables.

A disagreement over the meaning of an intension- i.e. what is denoted by a 'variable'- is a disagreement about its extension.

Thus, those whom Berlin places in the negative camp typically conceive of the agent as having the same extension as that which it is generally given in ordinary discourse: they tend to think of the agent as an individual human being and as including all of the empirical beliefs and desires of that individual.

There is no limit to such beliefs and desires. A free person may want to become God or serve Satan.  

Those in the so-called positive camp, on the other hand, often depart from the ordinary notion, in one sense imagining the agent as more extensive than in the ordinary notion, and in another sense imagining it as less extensive: they think of the agent as having a greater extension than in ordinary discourse in cases where they identify the agent’s true desires and aims with those of some collectivity of which she is a member; and they think of the agent as having a lesser extension than in ordinary discourse in cases where they identify the true agent with only a subset of her empirical beliefs and desires — i.e., with those that are rational, authentic or virtuous.

Mereology is very weird when it comes to epistemic 'intensions'. My desire to be the cat which says woof woof may involve becoming God while secretly serving Satan  

Secondly, those in Berlin’s positive camp tend to take a wider view of what counts as a constraint on freedom than those in his negative camp: the set of relevant obstacles is more extensive for the former than for the latter, since negative theorists tend to count only external obstacles as constraints on freedom, whereas positive theorists also allow that one may be constrained by internal factors, such as irrational desires, fears or ignorance.

In other words, these stupid cunts make all sorts of arbitrary assumptions of a foolish type. The fact is the guy best placed to become the next Caesar or Sultan is a slave in the Praetorian Guard or the Janissary Corps.  

And thirdly, those in Berlin’s positive camp tend to take a narrower view of what counts as a purpose one can be free to fulfil.

Narrowness is not the problem. Nonsense is.  

The set of relevant purposes is less extensive for them than for the negative theorists, for we have seen that they tend to restrict the relevant set of actions or states to those that are rational,

but, because of Knightian uncertainty, Tardean mimetics is the 'regret minimizing' course. In other words, if you do what the smart people do, then even if you lose by it, you don't blame yourself. You are in the same boat as the smart dudes.  

authentic

you really are authentically you even if your Professor tells you that you are 'inauthentic' because you are not sucking his cock with vim and vigour. People who talk of 'authenticity' are either deeply deluded or they are trying to gaslight you.  

or virtuous,

Nobody doing philosophy is virtuous as opposed to vacuous.  

whereas those in the negative camp tend to extend this variable so as to cover any action or state the agent might desire.

Desire is irrelevant precisely because it plastic. Regret minimization is what motivates consequential actions. 

On MacCallum’s analysis, then, there is no simple dichotomy between positive and negative liberty; rather, we should recognize that there is a whole range of possible interpretations or ‘conceptions’ of the single concept of liberty.

In other words, the thing is nonsense.  

Indeed, as MacCallum says and as Berlin seems implicitly to admit, a number of classic authors

i.e. shitheads who served a particular partisan political purpose at some time or place remote from our own milieu.  

cannot be placed unequivocally in one or the other of the two camps. Locke, for example, is normally thought of as one of the fathers or classical liberalism and therefore as a staunch defender of the negative concept of freedom.

Locke is thought of as a guy paid to write some particular stripe of shite.  

He indeed states explicitly that ‘[to be at] liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others’.

In which case nobody is at liberty. Mummy or Wifey might give them tight slap. Same thing happens when you try to pinch the bum of an attractive woman.  

But he also says that liberty is not to be confused with ‘license’,

or libertinage- i.e. pinching bums 

and that “that ill deserves the name of confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices” (Second Treatise, parags. 6 and 57).

Also, you look a fool when you complain that  Mummy is 'confining' and torturing you because she insists you stay home finish your homework. This is because people point out that you are 45 years old and shouldn't waste your time resitting the Chartered Accountancy Exams. Just get a job already and move out of your parent's basement. 

While Locke gives an account of constraints on freedom that Berlin would call negative, he seems to endorse an account of MacCallum’s third freedom-variable that Berlin would call positive, restricting this variable to actions that are not immoral (liberty is not license) and to those that are in the agent’s own interests (I am not unfree if prevented from falling into a bog).

Or more to the point, you are not unfree if you are hanged, drawn and quartered, for the terrible sin of sodomy.  

A number of contemporary liberals or libertarians have provided or assumed definitions of freedom that are similarly morally loaded (e.g. Nozick 1974; Rothbard 1982; Bader 2018).

Should you be free to hire as CEO someone who isn't a Transgender, Disabled, Lesbian Rapist? No! That militates against DEI ideology! Bleeding heart libertarians will stop inviting you to their parties. This will be sad because there is nothing funnier than a hefty bloke trying to drink his own menstrual blood as part of his broader commitment to Feminism. 

This would seem to confirm MacCallum’s claim that it is conceptually and historically misleading to divide theorists into two camps — a negative liberal one and a positive non-liberal one.

Also, it is against the law to divide such theorists into torsos separate from their heads and legs. Still, it may curb a great nuisance if you just went ahead and did it anyway.