Highlights From The Comments On Self-Determination
1: Rosemary (writes Parallel Republic) says:
I don’t like this philosophically, but I have to admit that in the real world it’s the only way any of this is ever going to work. 2: Chipsie:
Agreed about the weird right. This paper, which I linked in the original, tries to discuss what group rights would mean, although it ends up settling on them being simple if a group has a government that claims to speak for them, which most secessionist regions do. As for the second paragraph, I’m imagining some situation like - India is mostly Hindu. But some subregion of India is mostly Muslim. But some guy in that subregion is a Hindu. Perhaps the subregion is sad being ruled by Hindus, but that guy is happy. If we let the subregion get independence, the majority will be happy, but that one Hindu will be sad. Is there any reason not to go with the greatest good for the greatest number here (and allow the secession)? Maybe (counterfactual) India is very liberal and both Hindus and Muslims in that subregion have lots of rights, but if the region were allowed to secede it would become a Muslim fundamentalist state that oppressed its minorities. This seems a lot like the original Confederacy problem, in that it takes the usual world-policeman moral dilemma of “should good countries conquer bad countries to prevent them from being bad?” and twists it into the “should good countries prevent bad countries from gaining independence, to prevent them from being bad?” I’m not sure how to think about these questions. 3: Evan Þ writes:
A lot of people had this objection, which I don’t find very interesting. I don’t know what the real-world numbers for the Confederacy looked like, but it seems possible in principle that, say, all white citizens supported, all black citizens opposed, and blacks were a minority so it passed. I don't think that scenario would be very different, ethically, from what really happened, so I don't want to hang my opposition to what really happened on its differences from that scenario. People seem to put a lot of effort into proving that some democratic process which returned a morally abhorrent result wasn’t really democratic (eg Trump losing the popular vote, Hitler gaining power through a complicated process that wasn’t just democracy). Often they’re right, but who cares? If you want to make the case that democracy necessarily returns non-abhorrent results, I’d be very interested to hear that argument. Otherwise I think we should accept that possibility and try to plan around it when coming up with moral and political philosophies. 4: jumpingjacksplash writes:
I’m mostly willing to bite these bullets. The one that bothers me the most is Israeli settlements - there ought to be some rule against sneaking in under cover of night, setting up a town on someone else’s land, and then seceding and saying it’s yours. This rule can’t be absolute and permanent - European colonization of the US was basically this, and nobody thinks we should give it back to the Indians now - but it should exist enough to prevent exploitation. I think this rule would cover ISIS and South Africa too. I’m definitely willing to bite US cities seceding as tourist gimmicks - see eg the Conch Republic. 5: Robert Benkeser (writes Humble Pie) says:
Based on sources like this, I think the most likely scenario is that the Crimeans voted yes by a hair in ‘91, then became less excited as time went on. It might also be relevant that the ‘91 vote was about the Soviet Union, vs. later votes where the alternative was Russia. 6: Jacob (writes Streams of Consciousness) says:
Yeah, being an island does seem like a pretty good replacement for being in a Civilization game, among the type of people who care about these things. 7: Mike G writes:
Everyone keeps saying this and I think it's overly cynical. There's an international norm that says you can't launch unprovoked aggressive invasions. You could ask "how many battalions do international norms have?", but the answer would be "quite a lot!" The fact that Russia broke the norm led lots of countries to sanction it and otherwise cause it grief. I'm not saying this norm is foolproof - if it had been a stronger and more popular country like the US, maybe they could have gotten away with it. But the norm isn't totally toothless either. I bet all the time there are dictators who think "should I invade my neighbor? No, that would mean I'm violating an international norm and I'd get in trouble." Saying "might makes right" is ignoring this valuable and powerful system. Worse, it's hyperstitionally weakening the system - as long as everyone knows everyone knows everyone ... that there are international norms, the norms will be real. Cf. why nobody uses nuclear weapons during war. TGGP asks:
Sort of? I think of it as something like - we have norms against murder. Those norms are real and important, but sometimes police (or, in some countries, organized crime) kill people and get away with it, because they’re powerful. We shouldn’t pretend the norms against murder are magic and work regardless of power relations. But we also shouldn’t dismiss them entirely and agree norms are meaningless and we’re in the state of nature. Instead we should be grateful that norms exist which constrain the little guys, be grateful that even powerful people at least have to think really hard before violating norms, and work to expand the norms so that even the powerful people follow them. 8: Obormot on DSL says:
The post argues…well, it argues a lot of things, but mostly that modern norms of international law perpetuate rather than prevent conflicts. Insurgents count on support from pacifists in the country they’re fighting against and from global policemen (eg the US), which makes insurgency worthwhile (ie they might win). If everyone (including foreign countries and voters/politicians in the country they were fighting) just agreed that every country was sovereign and had the right to do what it wanted in its own borders and anyone who disagreed would be crushed, then anyone who disagreed would actually consistently get crushed, and nobody would be dumb enough to disagree. Peace! This ties into a lot of other UR assumptions I can’t argue with in the depth they deserve here. A poor and unfair summary might be: I actually don’t want countries doing as much genocide and repression as they want, and I think historic attempts to pressure them not to do these things have often been successful (though it’s hard to count since we don’t record atrocities that don’t happen). Rebels will absolutely rebel even in the absence of domestic and foreign aid, and have done so from the Zealots to the Taiping Rebellion through today. Moldbug’s claim that the pre-WWI system was good at preventing wars and atrocities is dubious given how many wars and atrocities there were before WWI (I would guess eg more conflict deaths per capita in the 19th century than the 21st, although I know this sort of thing is hard to quantify). 9: Joel Long writes:
10: Peter Gerdes writes:
I think “makes the world better” is always your ultimate criterion, but in real life you try to have simple rules to address disagreements. In some sense I want whether some guy goes to jail to depend on whether it “makes the world better” for him to be there, but in an actual society it’s easier to have some laws where you go to jail if you break them. I feel the same way about Alex Mennen’s comment:
11: Name99 writes:
I agree letting the people on top of the oil have it is weird, but it doesn't seem weirder than the fact that Qatar gets to be incredibly rich because it has oil and doesn't have to share it with eg Afghanistan. 12: ogogmad (writes Ogogmad’s Newsletter) says:
Yeah, this is a pretty good point. I think the real-world solution closest to what I philosophically want is something like: by default we respect existing borders, because transaction costs. If someone invades an existing state, even an existing state without a great justification for existing, the international community condemns it, to prevent the norm from being eroded. If a minority group in an existing country wants independence, then on a philosophical level they should get it, but realistically there are lots of things that should happen and nobody has time or energy to support all of them. If the parent country is a democracy that wouldn’t be harmed too badly by the secession, they should let them go. If not, and it isn’t urgent (ie they’re not being horribly oppressed), the group should avoid forcing the issue. If they do feel horribly oppressed, they should force the issue, and the international community should vaguely take their side, proportional to how oppressed they are and how much trouble it’s going to cause for them to leave. This is a lot like the current system except that I think if ethical people happen to be in charge of a country, they have a (weak, potentially balanced by other things) obligation to let people leave, even if they’re not especially oppressed. This seems to be the way the UK is treating Scotland, and I give them a lot of credit for it. You’re a free subscriber to Astral Codex Ten. For the full experience, become a paid subscriber. |
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