Humanism is a realistic philosophy. Sure - thinking about ethics often involves theoretical situations. But it's not unusual for something to work in theory and fail in reality.
Case in point. Do businesses need to be regulated? In theory, it's in the best interest of businesses to deal fairly with their customers. A self enlightened take on this is that we don't need to regulate businesses because businesses can self regulate. If they fail to self regulate, they will eventually go out of business. It's a great theory.
Compare Theory to Reality
The problem? Not everyone is enlightened. Some people are actually criminals who don't mind harming their customers if it means making an extra buck. we can argue that this is counter productive all we want, but all our hang wringing about theory isn't going to change the reality that some people choose to be crooks.
Reality Requires Rules
The question then becomes, what should we do, if anything, about the crooks? We, the people, have come up with rules that say - if someone steals from you, or kills you or harms you, they can be held liable for the damage they do. Some of these rules are criminal codes. Some are civil rules. All are designed to deal with the exceptions to our theoretical rule. Sure, most people will deal fairly with others, but - for those that don't - here is how we protect people.
Do we really need rules?
Yes actually, we do. Here is why. Sure, if someone is ripping off their customers, eventually customers won't use them. But there are other problems criminals cause. The damage done might not just be monetary. It might be deadly. People sell tainted alcohol in places without regulations to ensure safe alcohol. Recently, an ice cream maker in Florida killed a customer in Illinois with tainted ice cream. Those customers can't just go elsewhere. They are dead. And if our solution is - well some people need to die in order for everyone - ethical business people and criminals included - need to be free to do whatever they want, even if what they want is to rip off people and kill them, then I think most people - in reality will disagree with that conclusion.
If we can stop people from dying by instituting regulations and inspections, then we should. This doesn't just help make it so criminals can't operate, it also helps ensure that well meaning business people don't miss something. If you ever read the inspection reports for your local restaurants, you may never want to eat there again. Cleanliness is super hard and customers need to know that purchasing a product or service is - basically safe.
Trust is Everything
If customers can't tell who is a criminal and who isn't, or they have no way of knowing whether the food they are going to pay to eat is safe or not, they start to lose trust in the entire economy. It only takes one idiot to kill them. Don't know if that ice cream is tainted and might kill you? Don't eat ice cream.
What regulations do is help ensure that good business operate in a way that is profitable and helps ensure that anyone with ill intent can't operate at all because the trouble and expense of complying with the rules makes it hard or impossible to cut corners, then customers can purchase meat and dairy and whatever, with reasonable assurances that they won't die.
Holding People Accountable
The other things rules and laws do is that if someone does cause harm, we have the ability to hold them responsible because the regulations and laws make certain things illegal. If there is no law that says you can't sell diesel fuel as a drink, then if someone does and kills a bunch of people, what they did - was legal. Terrorists, would have a field day.
Theory vs. Reality
In theory, we should be able to trust everyone to behave in their and therefore our best interest. In reality, not everyone will. Some people harm others intentionally. And because we live in the real world and not the imagined world, we have a system of laws. The challenge is to ensure max freedom while still ensuring the relative safety of the products we consume.
Why Humanism and Libertarianism aren't really compatible.
While both Humanism and Libertarianism are reason based, Humanism is reality based. It's not just a rejection of supernaturalism. It's a rejection of non-reality based approaches to problem solving. What really happens. What really causes that to happen. What really works to solve that real problem we really have.
Worrying about how ALL regulations restrict freedom while ignoring the very real harms absolute freedom causes is to me, as a Humanism, living in a fantasy world and ignoring the real one. I can agree with the theory that ideally, yes, everyone should be free. Where I diverge is in the belief that all humans will act out of enlightened self interest. There is no evidence this is true. In fact there is plenty of evidence it's not true.
Does that mean we should give in to pessimism and regulate everything? Of course not. I think why libertarians struggle with Humanism so much is that Humanism is about balancing our rights and our responsibilities. It balances our individual freedom with the needs of the community we are in.
It's not either or - it's both and. It's both individual rights AND community responsibility. Why? Because we humans aren't ideal creatures. We are messy and impulsive. Some of us - criminally inclined.
Any ethical theory that doesn't account for our lived reality is flawed.
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