Another framing is that we should deny peddlers of vice access to the state-regulated market economy. Large-scale businesses are only possible because the state provides access to the courts as a predictable dispute resolution mechanism. In the absence of state enforcement of contracts (at least as a fallback), it is not practical to scale businesses beyond what can be managed by an extended family network.
The state is not obligated to provide this service to every type of business. We've historically chosen to deny many types of businesses access to the state-regulated market, and we still do.
I think this is complementary to your argument in the article.
Related to this, we could also make a vice legal but ban advertising for it. We do some of this already eg no tobacco ads on TV. We can legalize a vice but make it inconvenient or expensive or unglamorous -- eg alcohol/tobacco taxes, Sunday liquor bans, government-owned liquor stores.
Imagine if you had to do your sports better at a drab, depressing, ugly building, and the other people there were old degenerate regulars who are sad to look at, and you have to drive across town to get there, and the taxes are high enough that winning is less fun.
If we have a right to do something, does that mean we must have a right to do it cheaply, conveniently and anonymously? Can we allow the freedom to engage in vice, but raise the costs substantially, and still be a free society?
Tend to agree BUT how do you explain among teens the enormous drop in use of alcohol and drugs as well as decline in sex and pregnancy while all these (amoral) shifts are ongoing?
I agree with pretty much everything here and still want to think of myself as a "liberal". I tend to think the principled, "neutrality between competing conceptions of the good" version of liberalism was always a non-starter. For one, it never had a principled answer to the question of why it's legitimate for the state to say you can't walk around public spaces with a boom box blaring at 120 decibels, but not legitimate for the state to say you can't walk around public spaces wearing really ugly clothes. That is, the question of what counts as "harm" of the sort the state can legitimately regulate can't be answered in a value neutral way.
So I like a thin, "modus vivendi" sort of liberalism. In large, pluralistic societies with people who vary along lines of religion, ethnicity, culture, and lots more, there are going to be lots of questions where its wise for the state to remain as neutral as possible. The wars of religion in Europe teach us that if you try to have a state religion in a religiously diverse country, there will be a lot of conflict over just what it should be, and things could get very bloody. So we should be looking for compromises, rather than each of us trying to get the state to adopt the religion we think is true. And similar, though less extreme, considerations will support looking for compromises in many other areas of policy. But we shouldn't hastily generalize from the wisdom of a general disposition to look for compromises to some (likely incoherent) principle of liberal neutrality.
I don't think that philophical liberalism lies behind the reluctance to tax "engagement" of social media, or enforce restrictions on smoking marijuana in places where non-smokers receive the stench, or making gambling a lot more costly to engage in beyond some low recretional level, or taxing net emissions of CO2.
But the perfectionist rejects the idea that the state should remain neutral about what the good life is, insisting instead that the good life should inform state action.
This is gret so long as we don't reify "the state"
I'm old enough to remember when it was possible to drive your kids to school without having them staring at gigantic billboards with pictures of half-naked women selling lap dances to desperate men...
There is a continuum. Vice will generate harm, it's about how much harm and where that harm is targeted. In purely illiberal states the individual bears the vicious brunt of state force when they engage in vice. But when liberalism becomes too amoral and permissive, the harm doesn't go away, it dissipates into the community where more addicts roam the streets, more financial harm and destruction enters households. It's about balancing individual freedom with the radiant effects of vice. And that requires, as you say, moral grounding. Institutions cannot be transaction level judges, they must have a POV.
I find Ezra's change of tune to be interesting, because it mirrors mine from years before. The educated class who support decriminalization are always imagining some acquaintance or fictional 'good person' who happens to dabble in vice from time-to-time. There is rarely consideration for the person who abstained because of existing frictions, and then lost themselves in it. For Ezra, and I imagine many others, they have to see the actual outcomes of such policies in order to alter their position.
Vice, defined as doing something that harms the doer but nobody else, strikes me as none of the government's business. Certainly government enforces morality at a fundamental level—that is, after all, its purpose (to constrain natural impulses that would tend to destroy society)—but there is a level of granularity in which it is counter-productive. People who choose to destroy themselves ought to be allowed to do so. Otherwise, we wind up a society full of coddled weaklings.
No. There is no such thing as vice that only harms the individual. Even the most private vice (say, porn) corrupts the individual and affects how they treat others.
Another framing is that we should deny peddlers of vice access to the state-regulated market economy. Large-scale businesses are only possible because the state provides access to the courts as a predictable dispute resolution mechanism. In the absence of state enforcement of contracts (at least as a fallback), it is not practical to scale businesses beyond what can be managed by an extended family network.
The state is not obligated to provide this service to every type of business. We've historically chosen to deny many types of businesses access to the state-regulated market, and we still do.
I think this is complementary to your argument in the article.
Related to this, we could also make a vice legal but ban advertising for it. We do some of this already eg no tobacco ads on TV. We can legalize a vice but make it inconvenient or expensive or unglamorous -- eg alcohol/tobacco taxes, Sunday liquor bans, government-owned liquor stores.
Imagine if you had to do your sports better at a drab, depressing, ugly building, and the other people there were old degenerate regulars who are sad to look at, and you have to drive across town to get there, and the taxes are high enough that winning is less fun.
If we have a right to do something, does that mean we must have a right to do it cheaply, conveniently and anonymously? Can we allow the freedom to engage in vice, but raise the costs substantially, and still be a free society?
Tend to agree BUT how do you explain among teens the enormous drop in use of alcohol and drugs as well as decline in sex and pregnancy while all these (amoral) shifts are ongoing?
Good question. One possible explanation is that a "better" vice can croud out a "worse" one. Like, who still smokes opium?
I agree with pretty much everything here and still want to think of myself as a "liberal". I tend to think the principled, "neutrality between competing conceptions of the good" version of liberalism was always a non-starter. For one, it never had a principled answer to the question of why it's legitimate for the state to say you can't walk around public spaces with a boom box blaring at 120 decibels, but not legitimate for the state to say you can't walk around public spaces wearing really ugly clothes. That is, the question of what counts as "harm" of the sort the state can legitimately regulate can't be answered in a value neutral way.
So I like a thin, "modus vivendi" sort of liberalism. In large, pluralistic societies with people who vary along lines of religion, ethnicity, culture, and lots more, there are going to be lots of questions where its wise for the state to remain as neutral as possible. The wars of religion in Europe teach us that if you try to have a state religion in a religiously diverse country, there will be a lot of conflict over just what it should be, and things could get very bloody. So we should be looking for compromises, rather than each of us trying to get the state to adopt the religion we think is true. And similar, though less extreme, considerations will support looking for compromises in many other areas of policy. But we shouldn't hastily generalize from the wisdom of a general disposition to look for compromises to some (likely incoherent) principle of liberal neutrality.
I don't think that philophical liberalism lies behind the reluctance to tax "engagement" of social media, or enforce restrictions on smoking marijuana in places where non-smokers receive the stench, or making gambling a lot more costly to engage in beyond some low recretional level, or taxing net emissions of CO2.
But the perfectionist rejects the idea that the state should remain neutral about what the good life is, insisting instead that the good life should inform state action.
This is gret so long as we don't reify "the state"
I'm old enough to remember when it was possible to drive your kids to school without having them staring at gigantic billboards with pictures of half-naked women selling lap dances to desperate men...
https://www.stlpr.org/other/2006-08-22/federal-court-throws-out-ban-on-sexually-explicit-billboards
There is a continuum. Vice will generate harm, it's about how much harm and where that harm is targeted. In purely illiberal states the individual bears the vicious brunt of state force when they engage in vice. But when liberalism becomes too amoral and permissive, the harm doesn't go away, it dissipates into the community where more addicts roam the streets, more financial harm and destruction enters households. It's about balancing individual freedom with the radiant effects of vice. And that requires, as you say, moral grounding. Institutions cannot be transaction level judges, they must have a POV.
I find Ezra's change of tune to be interesting, because it mirrors mine from years before. The educated class who support decriminalization are always imagining some acquaintance or fictional 'good person' who happens to dabble in vice from time-to-time. There is rarely consideration for the person who abstained because of existing frictions, and then lost themselves in it. For Ezra, and I imagine many others, they have to see the actual outcomes of such policies in order to alter their position.
I think we’re missing a paragraph on the externalities of private vices, but otherwise an excellent discussion.
I am ok with government nudging towards a more moral life.
But almost always am against outright bans.
For example, prohibition of drugs has outright failed. It's been fifty years we've spent over a trillion dollars in locked up millions of people
And yet, still anyone can get any drug they want at any time. Even in prison.
The reality is government can only do so much a society, culture, religion. That's where morality needs to come from
No. Was much harder to get drugs pre-legalizing weed. Less people used. Friction in vices is good.
No it wasn't. I've got about thirty years of experience.And it has always been extremely easy to get any drugs you want
Not for you, but say the average Grandma who wouldn’t know where to begin but now can drive to a store.
Vice, defined as doing something that harms the doer but nobody else, strikes me as none of the government's business. Certainly government enforces morality at a fundamental level—that is, after all, its purpose (to constrain natural impulses that would tend to destroy society)—but there is a level of granularity in which it is counter-productive. People who choose to destroy themselves ought to be allowed to do so. Otherwise, we wind up a society full of coddled weaklings.
No. There is no such thing as vice that only harms the individual. Even the most private vice (say, porn) corrupts the individual and affects how they treat others.
Vices like drugs of course affect others in secondhand smoke, drugged driving, etc.