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Comment by 3pt14159 | Hacker News Reader

Well bane let me, a libertarian, explain to you why I worked for the government while I was a libertarian.

Sometimes the solutions that are government mandated or subsidized would appear in a different form if the government didn't run them. So, for example, mass transit, like subways would still exist if the government didn't use coercion to fund and run it, it would just be owned by private individuals. Just because the government decides that they should be the ones that run the subways and I disagree with that, doesn't mean that I should be exempt from working for the TTC's construction engineering department.

These are two different things. When you live in a system that coerces you into giving up half of your income it doesn't mean that you are in the wrong for working for it or even taking things like subsidies.

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> When you live in a system that coerces you into giving up half of your income it doesn't mean that you are in the wrong for working for it or even taking things like subsidies.

I'm positing that it does.

In fact, there's only one case where I can find working for the government while thinking it shouldn't exist is workable, and that's working for the government in a capacity where you can dismantle the government. Which is often what happens right?

Privatization of previously government run programs is one of the example methods for doing that. I'm not interested in discussing the politics of this method, or if it is good or bad. I'm interested in cases where somebody specifically holds a viewpoint, then does everything in their power to work against that very viewpoint.

You were perfectly capable of finding a job that wasn't with the government, yet you specifically chose to apply, interview, get hired and maintain employment with an entity that you didn't agree with. I bet you signed paperwork and everything and happily collected your taxpayer provided paycheck.

It's actually the very definition of hypocrisy to the letter. In fact you put effort into ensuring that you behaved as a hypocrite.

It sucks, and sometimes people do hypocritical things. I'm not condemning you for it. But I do think it's more useful to call a thing what it is and proceed from there.

If you say "I'm a hyprocrite, it sucks and I know it but...meh." I'm actually fine with that.

But saying you aren't when you explicitly, textbook definition, are, is silliness and no amount of explanation or word bending can change that.

It's this exact behavior, this lack of meta-cognition and self-awareness that I find explicitly curious. You haven't explained why you engaged in hypocritical activities at all. You simply said that you did it and that what you did isn't hypocritical and you should be free and clear from behavior inconsistent with your beliefs because...?

>sometimes people do hypocritical things. I'm not condemning you for it.

Thank you for understanding.

>I do think it's more useful to call a thing what it is and proceed from there.

It's welfare, okay? It's all a giant welfare program. Gravy train. Uncle Sugar. Call it what you will. It's all very contradicting on paper, but it's not so bad when you're in it.

What's curious to me is the meta-cognition and self-awareness that goes on as a change-the-world startup like Google metamorphoses into Big Evil. It's usually a very gradual decline, like a glacier slide. Is it like the frog-in-water, where nobody notices? Does everybody know, and rationalize it? Or are people honest?

> In fact, there's only one case where I can find working for the government while thinking it shouldn't exist is workable, and that's working for the government in a capacity where you can dismantle the government. Which is often what happens right?

Where do you draw the line? What about using tax-funded roads, or regulated industries like air travel?

It doesn't mean I agree with that method. But it's at least internally consistent and I can respect the ideology and politics from it.

I happily think that my taxes help buy the civilization I enjoy. I actually believe the concept that government is not some impersonal monolithic bureaucracy, but is what Lincoln enshrined as "by the people, of the people and for the people".

When the IRS makes a mistake and gives me a hard time I don't think "GODDAMN IMPERSONAL IRS SCREW THE GOVERNMENT", I think "some poor schlep looking at tax returns all day screwed up." I think this might come from the area I grew up and live in, where practically every 4th or 5th person I know is employed in some capacity by the Federal government. So I personalize what it is and understand that it's not a mechanized black box.

> I actually believe the concept that government is not some impersonal monolithic bureaucracy, but is what Lincoln enshrined as "by the people, of the people and for the people".

In my view, that is either an untestable (and therefore essentially meaningless) hypothesis, or it's a testable hypothesis that fails nearly every test.

It isn't hypocritical because I find myself in a system that accepts coercion. If I disagree with communism should I refuse work and perish from starvation? No! I'm already within the system that make unethical demands. It isn't a choice between living free and working within an unethical system, it is a choice between working within an unethical system or working within an unethical system in a different manner. With your logic, if one sees the state as an actor of evil should he not cease all action? The state can only function with revenue, so would it not be better to live in the wilderness away from the state?

This is false. The state has it's own violence that one can constantly object to, but it does not stop one from selling labor on the market. Put another way: The state uses violence to coerce resources from individuals and to coerce other individuals not to compete in certain industries (like mass transit). That is where the sin is. To be an engineer at a public transit system or to be a income earner that pays taxes, both prop up the state in their own ways, but neither of them necessarily willingly works for a state run enterprise, but they both do.

It is not inconsistent with my beliefs because my beliefs do not hold those that work for or contribute towards the state through taxes as liable for the ethical misconduct of the state procuring taxation through force. It sounds like a tautology, but it is not.

> It isn't hypocritical

Wrong, full stop. It's actually the literal dictionary definition of hypocrisy.

The problem I have is not being a hypocrite, it's not being cognitively able to acknowledge it.

> If I disagree with communism should I refuse work and perish from starvation?

No, of course not. But you can recognize that you are helping perpetuate the system you disagree with. You may be empowered to resolve that conflict or not, but not the conflict exists at all? Now that's a problem. It fundamentally delegitimizes all of your arguments.

> That is where the sin is.

Definitely not interested in arguing where the sin is. Or how lamentable and pathetic a coerced situation you've found yourself in that you have no choice but to hypocrize yourself while insisting you aren't. You can also be coerced into hypocrisy.

Redefining words or insisting that you really truly dearly hold the set of beliefs you hold, yet are working against, doesn't modify the nature of the universe.

The truth is, it doesn't matter if you are a hypocrite. Everybody commits a little hypocrisy all the time. I don't like sweat shops, but man if cheap shirts made in unregulated developing countries don't fill my closet.

I don't have a particular problem with your beliefs, you've selected your chosen set of ideological axioms and have chosen to work off of those. I'm not even remotely interested in debating those.

What I'm interested in what happens when you violate your beliefs, do you acknowledge that violation, or do you try to fold space-time around your beliefs and act as if nothing at all ever happened.

Hypocrisy is behaving in a manner inconsistent with one's principles. One can have a principle that people shouldn't do anything that could assist something they consider evil, but if they have a less strict standard, doing so is not "the literal dictionary definition of hypocrisy".

No, the definition of hypocrisy (from Wikipdeia) is:

> Hypocrisy is the state of falsely claiming to possess virtuous characteristics that one lacks. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.

I'm claiming a set of beliefs, you may judge those beliefs to be inconsistent, but you don't define what those beliefs are, by definition I do. It is not hypocritical because I argue that despite the fact that society should be in a libertarian state a realistic assessment of the situation shows that my impact in supporting the governmental apparatus is inconsequential to its continued existence. The difference I make changing people's opinion on HN during the day is what will lead to the reduction of the state, not the acceptance of grants or employment.

So, for example, mass transit, like subways would still exist if the government didn't use coercion to fund and run it, it would just be owned by private individuals.

Given the dearth of private subway companies, I question this claim. There are lots of places where a subway would be highly desirable but doesn't exist, why hasn't some entrepreneurial soul built one already?

False.

The London Underground, the earliest subway system, was initially built as a patchwork of private railway systems that were later brought under government control.

Most of the subsequent systems (e.g. Paris, Moscow, St. Petersburg) used the London system as a reference.

So, mass transit did in fact arise as a result of private entrepreneurship. The reason subways don't exist in places where it would be 'desirable' is because of government interference, or simply poor economics.

And I'm not even a libertarian.

Not true. The Corporation of the City of London put up most of the money with the goal of alleviating congestion. The chief visionary, charles Pierson, was the solicitor (a sort of lawyer) for the City.

http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/first-day-lond...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Railway#Establishm...

Same deal with new York's subway - therre were private companies involved but they were set up within the frameworks of a public works project and were basically financial vehicles designed to limit financial liability and attract some matching capital from the private sector for an initial large public sector investment or monopoly grant.

I'm sympathetic to libertarianism but this notion that all this stuff would happen by itself if it weren't for evil government interference is just bollocks, it's just as stupid as communists claiming that all private capital is wicked.

Are you aware of the history of the City of London Corporation? And its voting structure? If so, to try to equate it with any other government anywhere, seems rather disingenuous. If not, I suggest you have a look on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_London_Corporation

Yes, I worked in the City for years and considered living there as a resident too, when I was living in London. Just because it has an unusual structure doesn't alter the fact that it's a governmental body, and to claim otherwise because of its commercial roots is absurd.

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