I actually have three topics that follow up on the huge philosophical discussion between Dante and Markaba a few days ago.

This is a great chance to take this off my chest.


Agenda:

1. Collectivization
2. Conflict
3. BATNA

1.

Ah, but as I have said many times, I don't promote the idea of the Social Contract. I merely recognize it as the way society is by default. You can't get away from it. That hardly makes me an idealist. That's like saying "one-size-fits-all idealists who promote the idea of gravity." Gravity is neither good nor bad inherently; it's just a fact of nature. So too with the Social Contract--it's a theoretical model of how things are, not some idealized notion of how things should be, and we are forced to work within its bounds.

A not often admitted problem with Social Contract theory is that it destroys individual responsibility, and especially in accountability for actions committed in the name of the State.

This has two important consequences.

First, that nobody is really responsible for anything they commit in service of the state. The police who peppers, beats or shoots harmless civilians and dogs; the TSA who gropes you; the NSA who steals your sexts; the FBI who plants you a bomb and building plans; the CIA who waterboards you and the army who drones you: all are just doing their jobs. All are just complying with the social contract which authorizes them to be a part of their country, and which orders them to do those things.

We of course disavow the theory when others do it. It was not allowed as a defense for the Nazis. It was not allowed as a justification for the Communists. It is not today admitted as a reason for behavior in any newer dictatorship.

Except of course when we do it. Then it's all right. Because it's what the social contract says. Guys agreed to give up the right to not do that kind of stuff for the privilege of the country they belong to.

Second, from the other side it also dissolves guilt among all the citizens. This is at the root at the odd and unusual clause in WW1's peace treaties which mandated Germany to apologize for the war. Not the Kaiser or the Chancellor; no, Germany. Every last German citizen was guilty for WW1. But this collectivization of guilt doesn't only extend to apologies. It also extends to blame. For instance, in the Israel/Palestine controversy, each side collective blames the other. Since the other side happens to have governments who are hostile at us, and since their government is simply the embodiment of their social contract, then everyone of them is equally guilty of the hostility, both rhetorical and factual, exercized by their government. This of course makes it easy to act non-discriminatorily in their operations. But we have had already since after WW1. We had that in the Spanish Civil War. And we had that aplenty in WW2.

Of course, we also disavow that with regards to ourselves. We have dissent, internal debate, and people who disagree with what our government decided. So we should not be collectively blamed for our government. It's only others who are all approving of what their government does.

Social contract demands that every citizen is recognized as a combatant, because every citizen is part of what the government is doing, including those who personally disagree or voted against the current leadership. And it demands that no action, no matter how wrongful, in the line of duty, not be personally accountable, because every citizen did it, not only the one who did it. When a police officer burns a baby's face in a raid, it wasn't the police officer alone who did it, or even the higher officer in charge; no, the parents did it too, and even the baby did it to themself, by virtue of being co-citizens. They all together did it. Police shootings are not only not murders, but not even homicides. They are suicides.

2.

There are two problems with this point. One, individual rights and the greater good are not mutually exclusive concepts.

[…]

But they don't have to, which is the point. They can work in tandem, which is pretty much the definition of 'not mutually exclusive.' Individual rights make people happier, so that in itself serves the greater good, because happier people are less likely to start violent revolutions. It is only when the individual rights are carried too far that run counter to the greater good; it's a balancing act. The rest is moot.

[Note: I do not agree that individual rights make people happier, but I am not going to debate the point because it requires a little more digging than I can do at the moment. It is also questionable that happier people are less likely to start violent revolutions, albeit the reasons are different than for the previos, and this requires even more digging, and the definitions are much more contentios.]

It should not be surprizing that Hajduk, who voted four times for Maggie Thatcher for PM, and would still vote for her if she ran again, agrees with her that there is no such thing as society. From that standpoint, there just can't exist any common good that is incompatible with individual rights. But that is not my point here either.

It is true that individual rights and the social contract can sometimes find agreement on a question, be it theoretical or of concrete policy. But this doesn't eliminate or even dilute their essential conflict. In general, when we talk about conflict, we do not refer to things in which we find coincidence, but to those in which we find contradiction. The Western democracies and the Soviet Union and Mao all fought together in WW2. From this it doesn't follow that democracy (as practiced by the USA, UK or France) and Communism (as practiced by the Soviet Union and the PRC) are not mutually exclusive. They are. Or that they can be balanced in a single regime. They cannot. You can have either, but you cannot have both. And yes, at times they will coincide in policies or goals. They coincided in making war against the Axis powers, each for their own reason, ideological as much as realist-based, and even acted in coordination. But that does not make them compatible. They are in conflict, and their occasional coincidences do not establish a lack of conflict or a compatibility; only establish that two different lines of argument may lead to the same conclusion at times.

Generally speaking, we bother little with areas where there is, between social theories, little to no conflict. If there is a coincidence, it's at most mentioned in passing and we're just reminded of the consensus. For instance, slavery may be wrong because slaves have rights or because slaves are also part of society. Either way, you can attack slavery. But the coincidence here makes for no debate. The mention of consensus is the most it deserves.

The best example is the universal agreement that murder is wrong. Nobody questions that agreement. There are many ways to arrive at that agreement. Both an individual right to life and a social right to safety have been used to arrive at this conclusion, among many other possibilities. And yet… almost no two persons will agree where the boundaries of murder are, and therefore whether a specific instance of death is or is not murder. And most of the substance to these disagreements lies in different theories of the relation between individuals and society, and among individuals.

But except as it pertains to education about the inner workings of each theory, nobody cares that both theories agree that murder is wrong, or how each concludes it. And certainly nobody would argue that two, or more, theories of society are in agreement because they agree that murder is wrong.

The parts that are philosophically more productive are where the disagreements are. The parts that determine whether two theories are compatible or not are the parts where they disagree. Everyone can say that murder is wrong. The true test of coincidence (for this issue) is whether they define the same things as murder. And so on and so forth for every other issue.

The part that bothers and that defines a conflict between the social contract and individual rights theories is obviously not the part where they agree (for example, in that murder is wrong.) The part because of which they are in conflict is where they reach different and opposite conclusions. And that is the most important and most consequential part. Since either theory will lead us to "murder is wrong" it doesn't have different consequences to adhere to one or the other to determine whether murder is wrong. But since each may widely, and wildly, differ on whether one thing is or isn't murder, there will be widespread and frequent consequences of choosing one or the other for defining murder. When there is coincidence, the difference in rationales is only academic. But when there is divergence, the difference can have very real impacts on the world at large. Which are not negated or moderated by the times there are coincidences.

Generally speaking, in social and political philosophy, (and really in all philosophy, but social and political philosophy uniquely have an influence over the world which other branches of philosophy rarely do,) we regard theories as conflicting or compatible, not because of their closest coincidence, but because of their furthest divergence. That is why Soviet and Maoist Communism are considered conflicting with Western liberal democracy, despite joining together to fight Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

3.

For the bazillionth time, we are not the gays. We are not the blacks. We cannot model ourselves on those minorities when it comes to political activism. What worked for them has not worked for us, and likely will not, at least in the initial stages. Secondly, someone has to make the first step, and since we're the minority seeking to change things, that burden lies with us. If you think that society is going to offer us anything out of the blue in the way of a concession, then I may have to reassess your intelligence level. I can tell you right now: it ain't gonna happen.

Yes, because that's what experience has shown me. As it stands right now, they want fuck-all from us except total submission and possibly our mass suicide.

In business theory, when doing negotiation methodology, you are always suppozed to both think for yourself and gauge for your counterpart what is known as Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement, which is exactly what it sounds. Your fallback, in plain English.

Everyone has it.

On the other hand, it's not always easy to determine what it is in ourselves, much less in the other. A peculiar complication is that negotiation itself always has costs associated with it, which are inherent in the activity and independent of outcome. So a BATNA which was true pre-negotiation may no longer be valid after some time or stages of negotiation. However, it always exists, and it always permeates the decisions we take in negotiation. Determining it before attending the table simply clarifies for ourselves our own reasoning, and hopefully also our counterpart's.

It makes sense to negotiate when negotiation can foreseeably achieve a better outcome than what your BATNA is. It makes no sense to negotiate when it cannot. This is why ideally you must determine it before sitting; and why it matters that negotiation itself has costs regardless of outcomes.

At this point in time, regarding society (with a big S, I guess) versus us, in our and children's issues, their and our respective BATNA's are well superior to negotiation, so I do not and cannot realistically expect negotiation to appear.

The antis' BATNA is a status quo which is currently favorable to them, with an academic consensus largely favoring their views, technological advancements sure to make it easier to detect us and destroy us, and government that is both increasing its general encroachments on civil liberties and happy to use us as scapegoats, these two being the pincers which would crack us. They do not have anything to negotiate because any negotiation would worsen their position vis-à-vis their BATNA. There is no possible concession we could offer which would make negotiation a superior outcome for them, leading them to engage in it. So there is no position we can take, neither more moderate nor more radical, which would get them to concede something or even talk about conceding something.

However, and this is both equally important as the above, and too often forgotten or disregarded… Our BATNA is also superior to negotiation. For us, negotiation would have at least three costs which are certain to be contentios: first, the nomination of negotiating representatives; second, very likely the necessary outing of at least some of them, itself requiring their professionalization as pedo/child representatives; third, the agreement on a program to negotiate, even if modest or even if ranked in importance so as to know what can be renounced before what - and I would argue especially if modest or ranked.

Suppoze we solve the particular costs of negotiation itself. We still will not, for the most part, have a negotiated settlement better to our BATNA. It's not likely we'd get abolition in a first stage; so it's superior to remain in the shadows, whether to protect legal relationships or conceal illegal ones. It's not likely either that we'd get the repeal of living, travelling and working restrictions for convicted offenders in the first try, so it remains a superior outcome to not offend, or to not get caught. Indeed, fighting for it would expoze those who are working with children, volunteering in children's activities or charities or travelling to other countries, leading to non-offenders (or at least non-caught) to start to be restricted as if they had offended and been punished.

The only areas where progress looks feasible immediately are areas where no concerted "International CL" effort is necessary because others are already doing it for different reasons and under different flags: one is KP; where indemnity payments are under fire entirely as part of the court systems; non-real KP and sexting are increasingly viewed with begrudging, but not hesitating, acceptance, entirely on account of the consequences of their prohibition; and simple possession without production or transfer of money is also becoming acceptable because its prohibition threatens seriously all sorts of free speech and privacy online. Another is real life standards for treatment of pedos by MHP's outside the two incarceration systems (criminal and mental) - already spearheaded by some MHP's, though of course the role of B4U-act is not to be forgotten. A third area may be standards of proof for sex cases, including statutes of limitation. This looks terrible, of course, in Airstrip One, with the Savile case. But it looks much better in Amerika as many (adult) rape cases are coming to light where the absurdly low standards are creating a generation of unjustifiedly labelled offenders. And finally, ranks are breaking and cracks are appearing even in the once most monolithic anti construct of all: trafficking. Because some journalists decided to act like it and investigate claims further, finding emperors naked in the process.

These four areas are all progressing without open pedo involvement (except for B4U-act) and will very probably continue to progress without us. These are the only areas where negotiation may achieve something. But negotiation still doesn't improve over our BATNA, because not negotiating means the fight can be taken to the antis without the cause being put in doubt by any open pedophile support for it. And of course, without us openly involved, many nons can and have joined any of this exclusively on civil liberties grounds, increasing the manpower behind each cause.

So in summary, in the things which can realistically progress soon, more progress can be achieved without negotiation than through it. And in the things which at the moment look intractable, negotiation cannot bring about a better outcome either at this moment. So our BATNA remains better than any negotiated settlement. So we must not negotiate.

[Note: Incidentally… This is also my analysis of Israel/Palestine. Neither side can improve over their BATNA through negotiation.]