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#1 | |
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Very Grave Indeed
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Since the discussions in CT have been slowing up a little, I thought it might be a nice CT tradition to start up, for various posters to post essays etc that they've written over the years, as a catalyst for discussion.
It would be nice to see some lively discussion over the -content- and -ideas- of such papers, without getting bogged down in literary criticisms of style and formatting. In many cases, these essays would be from earlier in our academic careers, and we are probably more keenly aware of how much our writing used to stink than anyone commenting later, so try to keep things topical? To get the ball rolling, this is an essay I wrote way back in my first year of university for a World Politics course, on the prospect of the United Nations forming its own standing army. My own opinion on the subject has changed since I wrote it, but I'm very curious to hear from others about it. I apologise in advance for some anti-american bias, but I wrote that essay very shortly after the US invasion of Iraq, and in many places, critical evaluation of America was pretty rampant. Quote:
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#2 |
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Little Chief Hare
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I'd complain of the unsupported bias towards interventionism in this paper, the unexplained sense that there are "legitimate" and "illegitimate" acts of intervention, and the fact that because the UN operates by political economy it introduces new sets of problems, but first of all I'm not sure I'd want to get into the resulting argument with you and secondly I'm in the process of reading certain perspectives which are making my beliefs on the subject less certain.
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#3 | ||
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Very Grave Indeed
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You need only to ask me to expand on whether or not I feel intervention is a necessary thing, and whether I feel there are legitimate or illegitimate acts of intervention, and I can do so. You don't need to get hostile about the fact that there are "Unsupported" opinions in the paper, but then further down decide to simply get in the digs but not ask for an expansion of the reasoning. Quote:
So you read the paper and decide what, that several years ago, coming into my first year of university I was naive and idealistic? What on earth makes you think I'd take that observation personally or as an insult? |
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#4 |
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Little Chief Hare
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What makes you think I meant it as an insult? I'm not even sure how what I posted could constitute an insult. I didn't mean to come off as dismissive, it's just that I'm reading through Rothbard right now, as well as some socialist perspective, and I'm not sure I've been able to incorporate my readings well enough yet for me to actually take a coherent or strong position in the discussion.
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#5 |
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Very Grave Indeed
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Well, you pointed out what you percieved my stance to be in a fairly critical and dismissive way, so it was at least possible that part of the reason you didn't want to respond was because you thought I'd take it personally, but I'd hope by now it would be obvious that I make it a habit of not taking things personally in a discussion forum.
I posted the whole "Let's post essays" concept with wanting to hear your response specifically, as a matter of fact. So please, don't withhold it on my account. |
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#6 |
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Little Chief Hare
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Ok. I'll try to address it tommorow then.
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#7 |
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Little Chief Hare
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Ok, basically this is all I can think of in response.
I haven't studied the UN, so I'm not sure exactly how it works. It seems there are member nations, but that the UN considers itself to be in a position to intervene even in the affairs of non-member nations. Problems: This paper advocates UN military intervention in circumstances of great conflict, but rejects the legitimacy of US military intervention. Now, the UN may represent a larger portion of the earth, may be less biased towards any one perspective, and my function somewhat democratically, but what does this make UN intervention except an instance of tyranny of the majority rather than a minority such as the US (assuming the nature of the intervention remains the same except for the party engaging in it). Secondly, the methods the UN military would employ are questionable, as are the possible effects of organizing the military along the lines of UN ideals. This latter part you pointed out yourself by suggesting in the event of intervention against a member nation, soldiers in the peacekeeping forces from that nation could pose a problem. Basically, and this is getting a little abstract here, the use of interventionary force against any party cannot be justified by conceptions of "legitimacy". Power tends to be something many Philosophers, Economists, etc. think of as a neccessary monopoly. However, from an Anarcho-capitalist perspective such as that of Rothbard in Power and Market, this isn't the case. Here is a quick rundown of how the UN system compares to Rothbards ideals of power distribution: * To the extent to which UN member nations accept the use of the UN in intervention within UN member nations, including themselves, this represents a somewhat voluntary form of subscription to the services the UN provides. The main difference and problem comes from the fact that it is the governments of these countries which are in the position to deal with the UN, and these governments themselves, even when operated democratically, do not maximize economic utility because not all citizens would willingly subscribe to these services. This means that there is some number of discrete units of demand not met. * Interventionism stands in direct opposition to voluntary contract. Now, the criticism to this is "no ****", but this is a kneejerk response made in ignorance of the bigger picture. The use of force will almost always represent a violation of the will of the person it is used against, and thus it stands in contrast to voluntary contract; however, the point of using voluntary contract in determining distribution of force is that it minimizes infringement upon voluntary contract. Getting back to the point at hand, it is true that at least in the case of member nations there is a fair degree of permissability of intervention within their affairs by the UN (See first bullet to see where the gaps come in). Nations and peoples external to this system though shouldn't neccessarily be subjected to it. Now, the response to this usually takes the following course: "A system which would permit acts of genocide and wholesale slaughter is impermissable. Even if the use of interventionary force also represents violence and coercion, it represents a minimization of such." I have two responses to this. The first response, which is perverse in the eyes of most, is that human rights are deontologically negative. They exist only where something could be taken away from a person (their life, property, etc.); they only include the right to have things not happen to you. I don't think most people would take issue with this statement, but it's the next part they would find perverse. Provision of defense, being a service, is not a negative right. The idea of providing force on the basis of negative rights is a failure in language, because this provision is an assumption of a positive right. That something is entitled to be given. There's an intersection here of both emotion and conception, so I don't blame people for getting cross-eyed, but nevertheless I am of the belief this doesn't hold up. Response two, which is likely more tolerable, consists firstly of pointing out the failure of the UN to actually intervene when things such as Genocide take place. There are sadly current examples of this today. It consists secondly of pointing out that a free market system of providing for police services could easily respond to things such as genocide. There isn't a thing in the world that more demand exists for than safety from death. In acts of genocide, each individual who is being killed has this demand. Now, it certainly is true that in places like africa, these people are extremely impoverished. However, that's no barrier to provision of services. An advancement of services could be made, to be payed off at a later date. In cases of genocide it would likely be easier to pay this off because you're dealing with a consolidated group. Yes, this way of contextualizing provision of services will also likely strike some people as perverse, but the fact is it would work, and it would likely work better than any existing system. I'd hope most people would agree that salvation at the hands of selfishness is better than death under the auspices of charity. Last edited by Kilroy_x; 04-30-2007 at 12:40 PM.. |
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#8 |
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FFR Player
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: DDR Land
Posts: 4
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The general idea of the United Nations having a standing army is kind of pointless to me. The United Nations' purpose is to gather the nations of the world to collaborate ideas, rules, and make general agreements based on common ethical ground. Enforcement is carried out through specially trained inspectors who report information back to the collective of nations.
A decision of war is made based on the collective of nations agree that some nation, or, when applicable, terrorist organization, is out of line to the extent that those nations ally as a whole and declare war using their own resources. The nations then act on their own will as agreed on by the standards they set themselves. Therefore, at this point, what would be the purpose of the United Nations sending in their own "army" when the collective of countries can already do so themselves? Additionally, all contributors of the UN would have to supply their own troops and other resources to provide for this army (where else would they come from?). Should one of the nations defect from the UN, what would happen if that country was contributing some significant portion of the resources for the UN army? The army would fall apart! Just my $0.02 |
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#9 | |||||||||
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Very Grave Indeed
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:U...ns_Members.PNG Quote:
Whereas a random nation deciding unilaterally to just intervene militarily in another nations affairs is more accurately called an invasion. Put more simply: I agreed by joining the UN to follow the UNs rules, I did not agree to follow the USAs rules. Quote:
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#10 | ||
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Very Grave Indeed
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It is also the case that since not all nations have a standing army themselves, or much of one if they do, that contributions could come in a variety of ways. I imagine for example, that the US might not like the idea of putting -any- of its troops under the command of a non-US authority, and might elect instead to contribute equipment, supplies, and funding. I was never suggesting, nor were the people who wrote the articles I referenced, that the member nations would just send 1,000 guys each, and expect them to cohere in a month into a peak fighting force. |
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#11 | ||||||||||
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Little Chief Hare
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There would be limited to no demand for terrorism, and services provided would counteract terrorism. There would be limited to no demand for chemical and biological warfare because the costs for business in both image and money (ultimately all represented as monetary loss) would be horrible. Greed would prevent or at least minimize perceived and real unethical behavior as long as those with power remain subservient to market forces. Who oversees them? The same forces that always do in the market. On top of that, private review companies would probably form to analyze the defense providers, much as there are currently consumer reports that inform subscribers about the quality of products, their negative sides, etc. allowing them to make their own decisions about what to buy. Defense companies that had a great deal of controversy or illegitimacy about them would inevitably fail and become unable to exercize power any longer. A justification of terrorism? Of course not, defense is not synonomous with offense. The worst that could happen, at least according to Rothbard, if this contextualization of power and market is incorrect, is that some set of defense companies will re-assert power in the same way that government does today, meaning we will just end up with what we have now once again. Quote:
Last edited by Kilroy_x; 05-1-2007 at 03:50 PM.. |
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#12 | ||||||||
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Very Grave Indeed
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I mean, by that same token, a UN army wouldn't fare any better necessarily, but I'd rather an ineffective defense that came for free than an ineffective defense that came at the cost of my GDP. Quote:
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Little Chief Hare
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Last edited by devonin; 05-1-2007 at 06:20 PM.. |
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Little Chief Hare
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#16 | |||||||
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Very Grave Indeed
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it just seems to me that the system being described seems like it would function -best- in a highly sociallly aware, egalitarian society, where competition keeps all costs low, all efficiency high, and where different kinds of services would be encouraged to form package-deal style co-ops, where you get every service for one low low price. |
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Little Chief Hare
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#18 |
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Very Grave Indeed
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Well, it seems we've fallen into a fairly reasonable consensus, you've cleared up pretty much all of my percieved misconceptions, and I'm happy to grant that on paper, such a system seems like it would be beneficial in a number of ways. However, you can't extend free-market and privitization unilaterally. There are plenty of necessary services which, if opened up to everyone, would be completely untenable as a free-market system.
I really do worry about the possible consequences of trying to apply this system globally, or even on the scale of current nations...especially insofar as defense, security and police. Have a look into the RPG game world 'shadowrun' some time. I mean obviously there are plenty of fantastical elements to it, but the world does function on the grounds that there are basically no nations, and everything is run by corporations providing services...quite an interesting take on the consequences of what the anarcho-capitalists propose. |
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#19 | ||
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Little Chief Hare
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#20 | |
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Very Grave Indeed
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Well...the tenability of a free market system is based entirely on the availability of options. Most people in politics today who want to "privatize" services using the same logic you have been for why that is better, seem to not notice that simply making a service private doesn't imply much of anything. Now a company owns it, charges you for it, and the intention is that they'll use that money to make the service more efficient, but if there's still no alternative, they're under no obligation to do so.
My case example is the road system. Attempts to privatize roads have happened before. The logic goes "We sell some stretch of road to a company, who charges you a toll to drive on it. The revenue generated will mean that the company can maintain the road better and more efficiently" But if they decide to just pocket the money, you still don't have much of a recourse, when there's only the one road between A and B. I say such a system is untenable because the way it -would- work would require say...10 roads, owned by 10 companies in parallel between every destination, so they could actively compete and so you would have actual options if you don't like how the road is being maintained. There are just some infrastructural systems like that for which it is incredibly unrealistic or problematic to imagine a dozen companies all competeing with one another for your services. Further, I'm still not seeing what is to stop this free market system making like it already does today, and mergers, takeovers and conglomeration leaving us all with just the one big monopoly option anyway. Quote:
Also, I never said "This is how it will go" I said "Here's an interesting possible future where they went that direction, and it ended up bad" I wasn't aware you could research and properly cite the future :P |
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