
Liberty, Self-Esteem and Self-Governance - jacquesm
http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/wendy_kaminer/2009/09/_our_inalienable_right_to.php
======
foldr
This is all a bit alarmist. The (proposed) law would just require advertisers
to indicate that photoshopped pictures are indeed photoshopped. This is a
pretty normal kind of "truth in advertising" law analogous to labeling laws
for food. Doctrinaire libertarians may object to this sort of law in general,
but to most people they have an obvious utility in enabling markets to
function more efficiently. Of course, the idea of a government which will do
anything at any cost to increase (what it takes to be) the psychological
wellbeing of its citizens is fairly alarming, but what the author misses here
is that the _opposite_ is just as alarming: a government which is completely
unconcerned by the misery of the people it's supposed to represent. Complete
indifference of the government to the actual wellbeing of the people (as apart
from their formal legal rights) is apparently central to the author's rather
myopic ideal.

~~~
chasingsparks
It may be alarmist, but I don't think only libertarians would object. One of
the authors points -- admittedly, not his most vocal point -- is that in the
British case _government action seems especially unnecessary_. This is my main
objection (although I am roughly libertarian). The number of people who
actually do not know that models are not retouched does not represent a large
percentage of people. Expending real energy to solve non-problems seems like a
universally bad practice.

~~~
foldr
Yes I agree that this is unnecessary, but the article goes a lot further than
just saying that it's unnecessary. The claim appears to be that any attempt by
a government to increase the happiness of its citizens is inherently wrong. It
is not as if labeling shopped images for what they are would actually do any
harm.

~~~
jerf
I am an American; the rules of your local jurisdiction may vary. The
government does not have the power to make me happy, in any useful sense of
the term power. (It lacks both the capability and the authority, among other
things.) It has the responsibility to protect my right to _pursue_ happiness,
and that is all.

In fact the government has great power to make me _un_ happy, and I have the
right to pursue this problem electorally, but that's about it.

The article's point is once you start arguing against the preceding two
paragraphs, you really ought to be aware that you just threw liberty out the
window. The only way the government can make you happy is to exert an awful
lot of control, and given how things actually turn out in real life, all that
control is just as likely to make you unhappy, only, now, you have no recourse
left, because what is making you unhappy is the Ultimate Authority.

It isn't inherently wrong, but it _is_ inherently very suspicious, and for any
given _concrete_ proposal of how the government plans to make you happy, the
odds of the specific proposal being inherently wrong are _very high_.

(I'm also reacting much more to the British thing than the proximate
photoshopping debate, though I tend to think that anybody who still thinks
that any magazine picture has any reality left to it is not going to notice or
process a tiny little "This image may not be real" note. That is to say, this
is a feel-good measure for the lawmaker, I don't see how it will actually
change anything.)

~~~
foldr
>The government does not have the power to make me happy, in any useful sense
of the term power.

I'm not sure what you mean here. It certainly doesn't have the power to
guarantee your happiness under all conceivable circumstances (and neither do
you, and nor does any other entity) but it can certainly make decisions which
either increase or decrease your happiness. You would be happier, I assume, if
the government decided to cut your taxes, and less happy if it decided to
increase them. (Or pick some other example if that particular one doesn't work
for you.)

>The article's point is once you start arguing against the preceding two
paragraphs, you really ought to be aware that you just threw liberty out the
window

This is the alarmist part. Efforts on the part of a government to make its
citizens happy do not _necessarily_ entail "throwing liberty out of the
window". This is simply nonsense. And in general, saying that anyone who fails
to agree with your "preceding two paragraphs" is inherently opposed to liberty
is a rather childish rhetorical tactic.

>The only way the government can make you happy is to exert an awful lot of
control,

Governments do all sorts of things (e.g. running the legal system, maintaining
basic regulations on the market) which tend, on the whole, to increase levels
of happiness. I don't know if this counts as an "awful lot" of control, but it
doesn't seem especially unjustified or sinister. Neither does the particular
form of control in the case at issue, which is nothing more than a minor
market regulation of an unremarkable sort. You are talking as if the aim here
was for the government to somehow guarantee the happiness of every citizen,
but of course no-one is proposing that it either could be or should be so.
Some people do think that in those cases where a government policy may
reasonably be expected to increase people's general well-being, it _might_ ,
_typically_ , _absent reasons to the contrary_ , be a good idea to enact that
policy. But this sort of moderate position is of course too radically pro-
statist for the doom-and-gloom libertarians.

>I'm also reacting much more to the British thing

What's the "British thing"?

>That is to say, this is a feel-good measure for the lawmaker, I don't see how
it will actually change anything.

If it's not going to change anything, what is there to get so upset about? I
suppose it is a good chance to jump on the usual "gub'mint outa my 'shop"
bandwagon.

~~~
jerf
"Governments do all sorts of things (e.g. running the legal system,
maintaining basic regulations on the market) which tend, on the whole, to
increase levels of happiness."

You seem to have missed or not understood the point about protecting my right
to _pursue_ happiness. This entails things like keeping the criminal justice
system working, and a military sufficient to defend the country. Everything
you outline except taxes fits into that framework.

Where things go off the rail is when "the ability to pursue happiness" as a
metric for goodness is replaced by "happiness" as a metric for goodness. This
is not the same thing at all. Once you permit that as an argument for letting
(or requiring) the government to do something, you're in a different domain.

Taxes is an example of government making me less happy. You speak as if the
government by default owns all my money, and I should be happy about what I am
graciously permitted to keep. No, I am unhappy about what they take. I
acknowledge the need for it, but it would be fairly odd if it made me happy.
Failing to make me less unhappy is perhaps in some sense increasing my
happiness, but I'm not ready to accord them much credit for that action, in
the hypothetical world in which my taxes might go down anytime soon.

~~~
foldr
>Everything you outline except taxes fits into that framework.

You have missed my point, which is that governments do indeed have the power
to both increase and decrease your happiness. Your contention appears to be
that they do not have the power to increase happiness but only to decrease it
(or perhaps, at best, fail to decrease it). This contention is what I'm
arguing against. I am _not_ arguing against the libertarian conception of a
perfect minimal government (not because I agree with it but because this is a
separate issue from the one you've raised).

>You speak as if the government by default owns all my money, and I should be
happy about what I am graciously permitted to keep.

Actually, I didn't speak like that at all; you may be confusing me with a
statist caricature. Which part of what I wrote are you referring to here?

>Failing to make me less unhappy is perhaps in some sense increasing my
happiness,

So the legal system merely "fails to make you less [sic] unhappy"? I'm pretty
sure it makes you happier in the ordinary sense of the phrase. I could choose
many other examples, but I suspect that you are ideologically incapable of
admitting that any government programs outside the bare libertarian minimum
have made you any happier (whether or not this is in fact the case).

I realize, having been on the internets for more that five minutes, that most
libertarians are in favor of the government maintaining a legal system. Some
of them are even willing to admit that they are happier as a result of its
doing so. But this just goes to show that government-run things are not
inherently bad and misery-causing, which is my point.

------
balding_n_tired
Why should Photoshop be distinguished from the retouching, etc., that have
gone on since I suppose photography has existed? Google for "Pfeiffer Esquire
Harpers" and look up what happened about 1990.

And "misery"? My own waist is hardly tauter than Sarkozy's; what misery is
inflicted on me when a French magazine redacts his flab?

~~~
Perceval
I agree. Imagine the distress caused to supporters of Trotsky:
[http://199.219.158.116/~jordigetmaneraso/behold_the_disappea...](http://199.219.158.116/~jordigetmaneraso/behold_the_disappearing_trotsky.htm)

Imagine the emotional distress felt by viewers duped into believing that _Dali
Atomicus_ was real!
[http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/dali_atomicu...](http://iconicphotos.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/dali_atomicus_philippe_halsman.jpg)

~~~
jacquesm
When the state does it, it's not illegal.

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sethg
Shame on Ms. Kaminer for using "photo-shopping" as a verb, instead of
respecting the property rights of Adobe, which considers "Photoshop" to be one
of its most valuable trademarks.

------
miked
A great piece. As a tie-in to Hacker News, note that the article it links to
is by ucla prof Eugene Volokh, a successful software hacker himself.

~~~
CWuestefeld
I'm an avid reader of Prof. Volokh's blog, but was unaware he had anything to
do with software. Can you elaborate?

~~~
jacquesm
Does this help ?

<http://www.law.ucla.edu/volokh/>

"Volokh also worked for 12 years as a computer programmer, and is still
partner in a small software company which sells HP 3000 software that he
wrote. He graduated from UCLA with a B.S. in math-computer science at age 15,
and has written many articles on computer software. Volokh was born in the
USSR; his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was seven years old."

------
diN0bot
i like where this is going if only because i wish more processes were
transparent. i want to know how the products and services were made so that i
can both respond and learn from them.

by respond, i mean support authenticity, passion, risk and avoid poor social
and environmental practices. we've all happily bought software that was super
cool and built by a single person or small team, and just as happily pirated
ubercorps ubiquitious whateverware.

by learn, i mean that how-things-work shouldn't be so mystical. why _is_ that
junk food shaped that way? what planning process lead to those awesome
features? what were the intentions behind that ad?

most importantly, let us not forget that advertisements are intentionally
deceptive, even malicious. it's one thing to want to buy something and to do a
suitable amount of research to make a decisions. it's another thing to create
a need where there isn't one. if you have kids, then you know how horrible
advertisements are, and how insanely they play with a person's emotions and
identity.

we need more advertisement transparency and honesty, and that means
regulations or a superior ethics than currently. transparency is vital for a
healthy free market. regulations that promote transparency are probably a good
thing, though of course there are numerous ways to go about solving this
larger problem. after working on a consumer empowerment startup for a couple
years, i'd say that data collection is a huge problem, not least of all
because companies expose nada, and that getting information to consumers at
the point of 'caring,' which is somewhere between finding out about a product
and purchasing it, comes second.

better advertisements would go along way. how to make brief but objective
_advertisements_ is a tough problem. my imagination wants a solution that
automatically aggregates information across the internet and public resources
and then provides a succinct summary overlayed on top of the advertisement or
brand logo that i'm looking at...and only when i want to see it. i'm rooting
for AI but i'll settle for wisdom of the crowds meets poorly-paid turks.

~~~
anamax
> most importantly, let us not forget that advertisements are intentionally
> deceptive, even malicious.

Does that mean that the Swedish Bikini Team is not coming over to drink my
Coors Light?

~~~
foldr
No, it just means that you won't be disappointed if they actually do ;)

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gort
Meh. I'm on the fence on this one: while photoshopped images are speech,
they're false speech, which the speaker knows to be false, while the viewer
perhaps doesn't. If they do cause psychological problems for girls growing up,
that's bad.

The combination of deceit plus harm makes a half-decent argument for the sort
of regulation that's on the table.

------
camccann
Yes, these are probably silly and/or harmful laws, but how is this article not
just a political fluff piece?

An article with more on how these kinds of laws might impact a startup and
less political rhetoric would be both more interesting and more relevant.

