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From: tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Explorations of "social-interest": Back to Basics
Message-ID: <225@ubvax.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Jun-85 13:34:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubvax.225
Posted: Fri Jun 21 13:34:48 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Jun-85 06:20:55 EDT
References: <298@spar.UUCP> <2380037@acf4.UUCP> <657@whuxl.UUCP>
Organization: Ungermann-Bass, Inc., Santa Clara, CA
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In article <657@whuxl.UUCP>, orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER) writes:
> By continuing endless debate about *self* interest, nonLibertarians
> are failing to address the fundamental questions of politics of
> *social* interests.
>                   tim sevener   whuxl!orb

My own stance on society and institutions is what is called
"methodological individualist", that is, I distrust statements about
groups which cannot be justified by analysis of the motivations and
choices of members of groups, and ultimately individuals.

The "mi" stance makes a determination of what is *social*, that is,
what is beneficial to society as a whole, very much a question of
what is beneficial to the individual.  If a social order cannot
justify itself by its benefits to individuals, or if it cannot
explain why individuals should be loyal to it beyond threats of
raw coercion, then to me that social order is questionable on its
face and one's stance to it should likely be very opportunistic.

I only agree that questions of *self* interest are stupid in the
sense that the *self* in most such discussions is usually an
abstract rational being lacking ethical and moral dispositions
which I think most people do possess and which they have to take
into account.  Also the question of what is the subject of *self*
interest -- the individual, group, set of friends, nation, etc --
is almost never dealt with in most discussions of *self* interest
because most participants on this net conceive of the self's
orientation almost entirely in terms of individuals or family
units.

Still, social cohesion has to be explained in terms of the needs
and choices of individuals before *social* interests can be
constructed and acted upon.  Questions about individuals are
prior to questions of *social* interest.  So I don't apologize
for attempting to explain why individuals might want to follow
a social system that doesn't always assume they know what's best
for themselves.  It's an important question.

Where nonLibertarians likely differ from libertarians (at least those
I've read) is that the nons think that there are many answers that
can justify many different kinds of social systems.  Libertarians
think the number and diversity of justifyable types of social systems
are few and narrow in dimension.

Hence to my mind talking about individual motivations to follow
social systems can only help the nonLibertarians, since every new
social system that can be justified by reference to individual needs
and choices represents another viable alternative to Libertaria.

Tony Wuersch
{amd,amdcad}!cae780!ubvax!tonyw