Total Control (pro) is Better Than Free Will (con)

Thanks for challenging me ASB. Definitions My opponent has set up “total control” in opposition to free will, so I define “total control” as “the absence of free will.” Burden of proof My opponent has the burden to prove that a world where no free will exists is preferable to a world with free will. ==Rebuttal== Personal Ethics The fact that humans could put this list together themselves, using their free wills, proves that a world with free will is not a world devoid of ethics and justice. R1) Anarchy My opponent brings up a really biased definition of anarchy (anarchy = crime). The Oxford English Dictionary defines anarchy as “A social state in which there is no governing person or group of people, but each individual has absolute liberty (without the implication of disorder).” [1] First, I’d like to point out that a society can have a government AND still have free will. People can voluntarily enter a social contract and cede some of their decision-making authority to a State in exchange for protection. Democracies hardly meet my opponent’s conception of “total control.” Even totalitarian regimes don’t have a complete absence of free will, although they are closer to “total control” than democracies. Since most people would agree that democracies, like the United States, are superior to totalitarian regimes, like North Korea, then less control must be good. Murray N. Rothbard, in For A New Liberty, describes his belief in the non-aggression axiom: that all aggression against person’s or their property is illegitimate. Under Rothbard’s conception of anarchy, not only is individual aggression seen as illegitimate, but government aggression is illegitimate as well. Let us contrast this conception of anarchy with an imagined Statist society that had “total control” over its citizenry, meaning the country’s ruler could bend all his subject’s wills to his own, operating them like robots. This society will be far inferior to anarchy because the ruler will use his power to steal from his citizens to enrich himself and will use his automaton citizens to start wars with other governments to maximize his share of world power; this is empirically proven by the actions of all Statist governments. Somalia, for example, has faired FAR better under anarchy than under the military dictatorship of Mohamed Siad Barre, which collapsed in 1991. According to Peter Leeson, economist at West Virginia University, “Indicators of Somali welfare remain low in absolute terms, but compared to their status under government show a marked advance. Under statelessness life expectancy in Somalia has grown, access to health facilities has increased, infant mortality has dropped, civil liberties have expanded, and extreme poverty (less than $1 PPP/day) has plummeted. In many parts of the country even security has improved. In these areas citizens are safer than they’ve been in three decades (UNDP 2001). Somalia is far from prosperous, but it has made considerable strides since its government collapsed 15 years ago.” [2] Clearly, freedom is superior to more control, which leads to corruption. When you consider control, remember the immortal words of Lord Acton: “All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Car analogy Nonsensical – if we are the car, we obviously have the capability to “drive ourselves.” Free will for one person can prove to be detrimental to someone else. True, and total control can be detrimental to everyone. 2) Bastardizing Free Will Having a conception of ethics, like the nonaggression principle, solves my opponent’s objection. People can have free will and yet live by certain norms of behavior. In fact, studies at the Infant Cognition Center at Yale show that even babies know right from wrong, meaning acting morally, such as respecting someone’s right to life, is an innate attribute. [3] 3) There is good in everyone Then why can’t we trust that good and allow people to make their own decisions? 4) Communism is good This has nothing to do with free will. Also, no it’s not. Communist regimes have willfully murdered approximately 260 million of their own citizens over the course of human history. [4] Most of these murders were carried out to silence political dissidents. Communist regimes have sacrificed countless others for the greater good. Stalinist Russia sacrificed 7 million lives to starvation due to farm collectivization. [5] Mao Zedong forced his people to make steel in their backyards instead of farming, leading to the deaths of 45 million people in 4 years. [6] China’s incredible growth based on free market reforms proves that free market capitalism is superior to communism (a “controlled” economy). Just compare Cuba (communist) to Chile. According to the Chicago Tribune, in Cuba, "food shortages are frequent, the stock of adequate housing has shrunk, and hospital patients often have to bring their own sheets, food and even medical supplies." [7] The same source says that Chile has become 4 times wealthier than Cuba since 1980 "thanks to bold free-market reforms." 5) Stalin is not Marxist communism I believe this is a point for my side – “true” communism would be communism without totalitarian control (“total control”). ==My case== C1) Free will = ability to choose “David Hume thought that free will . . . is simply the “power of acting or of not acting, according to the determination of the will: that is, if we choose to remain at rest, we may; if we choose to move, we also may.… This hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains.” This suggests that freedom is simply the ability to select a course of action, and an agent is free if he is not being prevented by some external obstacle from completing that course of action.” [8] Thus, imagine a world without free will. You want to eat a juicy steak, but instead someone hijacks your mind and forces you to eat a boring chicken breast. You want to sleep in, but someone takes over and forces you to wake up at 6 am. You want to go to the movies, but someone hijacks your mind and forces you to work for 12 hours on a Saturday. A world without choice is a very bland, boring world. C2) Existentialism Existentialists believe that choice imbues our lives with meaning and without the ability to make choices, life will be devoid of meaning. Living a “moral life” is meaningless if you are forced to do so. “According to Derrida, political and moral responsibility only exists where one has to go through the aporia of the undecidable . . . Otherwise there is no decision, only a mechanical application of rules.” We get no credit for “acting morally” if we are forced to do so. In addition, if we are simply robots playing out the desires of some other being, our lives are meaningless. Only by having desires and the ability to act on those desires do we create meaning in our lives. Without choice, we are merely automatons. C3) Who will be in control? How can we ensure that a benign dictator will be in “total control” of us? If the dictator is not benign and is instead malevolent, the world will be a much worse place under “total control.” Imagine Adolph Hitler being in total control of our bodies and minds. That would not be a better world. [1] http://tinyurl.com... [2] http://tinyurl.com... [3] http://tinyurl.com... [4] http://tinyurl.com... [5] http://tinyurl.com... [6] http://tinyurl.com... [7] http://tinyurl.com... [8] http://www.iep.utm.edu... [9] Maja Zehfuss, Jacques Derrida, 2009, Critical Theorists and International Relations, page 146