I have recently finished reading a fascinating and thought-provoking book by political theorist David Benatar, entitled Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence. In this book, Benatar makes a rather unconventional argument–that to bring someone into existence is to harm that person, and that it is consequently generally wrong to have children, because to have children is to harm them. While I found Benatar’s argument most interesting, I ultimately found it unpersuasive. Here’s why.
Author: Benjamin Studebaker
The Inevitability of Cooperation
I’ve been thinking lately about why we cooperate with each other–why we form communities and states. The typical Hobbesian answer to this question is that we cooperate in order to protect ourselves from violence. There is truth in that answer, but security concerns, while a primary motivator for cooperation, are not the only motivator. This is important, because there are those who oppose cooperative institutions on the grounds that a world without cooperative institutions isn’t as dangerous as Hobbesians commonly believe, suggesting we should become total individualists (e.g. anarchists, transcendentalists, etc.).
Why Do States Kill Civilians?
In recent days, there’s been much talk of how the Syrian government is killing civilians in Syria. Most people have been inclined to view this as manifest evidence that the Syrian government is run by malevolent and/or insane individuals. I think this response is too quick and too dismissive. Throughout history, states have often killed civilians. The individuals who give the orders that civilians be killed are not all uniformly evil or crazy. There is some purpose that states seek to achieve by targeting civilians, and today I wish to shed some light on what that purpose is.
Religion and Children
Generally speaking, I’m a proponent of freedom of religion, even in cases in which the religious beliefs in question are rather extreme. I do not think the state should go about preventing people from being Amish, even though by being Amish those individuals reduce our collective economic efficiency. Being Amish is no more debilitating to our economy than many other behaviors adults routinely engage in legally, and a good deal less than some–the Amish do contribute to society, albeit in economically less efficient ways. Some individuals (typically both the very poor and the very rich) lead wholly unproductive lives. However, I’m not so sure I can take this permissive attitude in certain cases involving children.
Abraham Lincoln is Killing His Own People
The way the administration has been swinging coverage of the recent chemical attack in Syria and surrounding fallout has gradually sickened me severely. In the interests of levity and biting satire, I thought of an interesting notion–what if, in European countries, politicians and journalists had discussed the American Civil War within the same ideological framework that is presently used when discussing the Syrian case? Elites in the British Empire actually did seriously consider intervening in that war on behalf of the confederacy in order to secure their cotton supply, which was endangered by the union blockade. Thankfully, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the 1860’s did not share John Kerry’s temperament. But what if he did?
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Benjamin Studebaker 