Political Atheism

[adamruth]

And I suggest that adam reads them as well if he'd like to see how people behave in the absence of government authority.

But these are examples of people behaving within government authority.

Violent organisations will always exist, no matter what system you have.

 

[adamruth]

Do you have evidence that these things will still happen in the absence of government?

Every one of them has been offered in the free market at one time or another.

 

[arthwollipot]

Every one of them has been offered in the free market at one time or another.

And how has that worked out?

 

[adamruth]

And how has that worked out?

Very well, actually. Private education is high quality, private and volunteer fire fighting is the backbone of the industry. Private laws and enforcement aren't as common, but there are private security companies that do a good job and even historic examples of successful private law (Medieval Iceland is a good example).

 

[arthwollipot]

Very well, actually. Private education is high quality, private and volunteer fire fighting is the backbone of the industry. Private laws and enforcement aren't as common, but there are private security companies that do a good job and even historic examples of successful private law (Medieval Iceland is a good example).

The Thing was the government of Iceland. When the government is corporatised, you've got a plutocracy, or at least a corporatocracy (yes, it's a real word - check Wikipedia). It's like I said before, even in a free market, people will govern and be governed.

Interesting counterpoint: W. L. Gore & Associates.

 

[Tim Moen]

Let me apply the same logic you've just used:

Objective morality exists, and we call it universally preferable behavior.

Poisoning your neighbors would be universally preferable to not poisoning your neighbors, if your goal is to kill your neighbors.

Therefore, poisoning your neighbors is moral.

I don't believe this would meet the standard of universality. For poisoning your neighbour to be universally prefereable it would likely have to be in the rationale self interest of everybody to poison their neighbours otherwise it would just be individually preferable. But that does raise a good criticism about what goals should be. I think I would throw in with Rand on this one and say that the goal should be rational self interest, which, would probably include living a long life to full potential. If your goal does not align with rationale self interest it wouldn't be universally preferable. Again I think science can more clearly define what rational self interest is.

Let me stress again I am not claiming to know with certainty that I know what universally preferable behviour is, anymore than I know the laws physics.

Also, I've asked you about three times now to explain how you can tell whether an action is "universally preferable" without universal, situational knowledge of the future, or for that matter, universal, situational knowledge of the present and universal, situational knowledge of the past. In other words, how can you know that there was never, is not, and never will be, a situation in which an action that is usually preferable when trying to meet a certain goal changes to no longer be preferable when trying to meet that goal?

Sorry I thought I gave an adequate answer. You determine morality through scientific testing and rules of logic. You posit a hypothesis then you test it. This is the same for any scientific theory. Maybe Sam Harris can explain it better: (sorry the administrator won't let me post the url because I haven't posted 15 times yet) but go to youtube and after the dot com type in '/watch?v=n15kx2Z8nfk'

No. I am an emotional, irrational creature, and I engage in debates for many reasons, one of which being the fact that I personally think that determining truth is a good idea. I do not have to make any statement about the universal preferablity of anything.

You personally believe in truth and reality and so do I. I take it one step further and say that I would like everybody else to as well. As an emotional, irrational creature I understand my personal fallability (I believed in a god for nearly 30 years) so I understand that science is better at accessing reality than I am.

But you do know that some things are, right?

I guess you would have to define 'right', but, I know (in-so-far as anyone can know anything) that eating is necessary for life and therefore in one's rational self-interest. I would say I'm fairly certain that non-aggression is in everyones rational self-interest... but, this may not be true... I'm asking for some evidence that it is not true.

True. If you don't get in anyone's way, I'm sure nobody will care about what ethical principals you put into practice. Being able to prove it might help if you ever want to convince people that you are right though.

Granted. I don't seem to be very good at the convincing part, lol.

And yet, you act as though all the rights that you think are good are objectively true. One of the foundations of your axiom, for example, is that people can own property. Why is there no onus on you to prove that one?

This is a good point, if I am to advance a moral theory the entire onus is upon me to support. I believe property rights to be an extension of self-ownership. I am pretty sure that I own myself. I believe that its in my self-interest to stay alive and so I need to be able to eat to survive. If I ingest food I think most would agree that I own that bolus of food that is being digested and absorbed by my body. I also require shelter and warmth and so I think as minimum I need to own those things which would allow me to survive. Beyond that I think that I own the product of the mixture of my labor and raw material (John Locke's view).

If I grow some corn, or build a hut by myself I think that it would be difficult to prove why I should relinquish my possession of this property to someone else. Land rights are more difficult to prove, I'm not sure that claim staking grants someone property rights. I suppose it is a pragmatic way of attempting to resolve property disputes.

This is part of my criticism of your NAP. You seem to claim the ability to define aggression as whatever you want. This runs into problems not only because the term aggression becomes naturally ambiguous, but also because the next person over may not agree with you on what constitutes "aggression" or "defense".

Aggression is the initiation of force. In other words whatever you do that requires others, you must get their voluntary consent. "Aggression" and "defense" could become ambiguos in situations where survival, or, well being are not immediately threatened I suppose. I think there are pragmatic ways of resolving these disputes while science sorts out more objective answers.

Yeah, tell it brother! Parents are intentionally brainwashing their kids to accept coercive relationships.

Not intentionally.

"do it because I said so"/"do it or you will be spanked"

What are parents thinking? Don't they realize that kids are just as intelligent and knowledgeable as they are? Why do parents persist in believing the myth that kids are morons who would probably get themselves killed if there wasn't an intelligent and knowledgeable authority figure around to keep them in line?

"no back talk"/"you will respect me because"

Why do people teach this garbage to their kids? Respect for others, who needs that? I would much prefer a society full of self serving ******** who don't respect the people and organizations that hold it together.

I hope you aren't calling me a self-serving *********. Your comments seem to be moving from the realm of honest curiousity and mutual discovery to using sarcastic devices, and mischaracterizations and maybe even insults. I can understand your frustration, I'm probably not communicating these idea's very well to you, however, I'm not likely to continue trying if I think you are simply communicating with me for purposes of intellectual masturbation, or, self-agrandization.

You don't know me, and I think your characterization of me as self-serving or a less than adequate member of society may be a tad unfair. As a career firefighter/paramedic of 15 years I've put myself at risk for other people time and again because of a desire I have to serve my fellow man thereby enriching my life. I work for the government and I respect other men and women who work for the government with the intentions of improving our society. I would prefer that my job were private so that there would be more orientation towards performance and less towards beauracracy at the expense of taxpayers. Would this make me self-serving? Would working for a private company diminish the sacrifice, or, danger that I would willingly expose myself to for fellow men?

As a leader you can get instant respect through coercion and instillation of fear. This is true of parenting children and this is true of leading men on a fire ground. My experience has been that other people (including children) perform much better when they want to be lead by someone who exudes virtue, rather than when they are forced to obey a tryant. Maybe your experience with raising children teaches you that regular spankings and other violent outburst creates better children, but, my experience doesn't.

Don't dance around this issue. You claimed that morality is objective and that we are constantly advancing our understanding of it. I claimed that the primary reason why our views on morality change over time is that it becomes necessary or easy to change them.

For example, the abolition of slavery coincided nicely with the long term reduction in the need or desire for slaves brought about by the industrial revolution. Right now it is still considered moral to eat animals by most people, but I can easily see some future Human society reading with disgust about how us barbarians in the early 21st century used to kill animals and eat them or use them for clothes or whatever. That society will probably also have the ability to create artificial meat or some other related conveniences that we don't have.

I don't think I'm dancing around the issue. When you say morality you mean a different thing than I do. I will agree with you about technology raising ethical considerations. Vegetariansim is not viable option for survival in some countries, and is therefore not an ethical question, there is no choice or preference but to eat meat or die. In developed countries, however, we don't need meat to survive we have other choices and so I think a good case could be made that it is unethical to eat animals.

Perhaps you can show that slavery was necessary and/or some forms of coercion and violence were necessary in times past where no other choice existed for survival. This would not make it a question of ethics then, because preferences have to exist before actions can be judged ethical or not.

Yes that's right, if you think a murder is justified then you shouldn't bother paying for an investigation. It doesn't matter if you're an educated lawyer or a 19 year old burger flipper, you should get to decide whether someone is guilty or not.

I wouldn't be determining guilt or innocence, just, whether the guilt or innocence of a person mattered to me. If I cared enough about it I would pay for an investigation.

Come on. What you're describing is a system where you can buy justice. You think the people who run this "arbitration organization" are ever going to hand down a sentence that the guy who's paying their bills doesn't like?

Well since both parties have paid for his services and many other clients would be watching the proceedings, I would imagine the incentive would be high to engage in fair proceedings or lose livlihood.

I don't think so? Essentially, any rich person could pay a ton of money to one of these organizations to basically have them take on the role of judge, jury, and executioner against whenever they want against whoever they want.

If you were sufficiently frightened of the rich then you would join a dispute resolution organization with a million other fearful individuals that would collectively have way more money than one rich guy.

Your society would fall apart in days to weeks as rich people and corporations use their absolute power to take over.

Huh? This doesn't happen now and we have people with absolute power and relative impunity, why would it happen in a society where everybody was accountable?

Most powerful people don't care about whether their dealings are with respectable partners or not, they care about lining their own pockets. The people just plain don't care.

All the more reason to prevent these people from gaining a monopoly on force (government). In a free society people who cared about lining their own pockets would have to ensure virtuous behaviour or others would not give them money. Instead of the corrupt getting richer, the virtuous would get richer IMO.

Corporations would make it through just fine, except now there aren't any regulations (you know, those things we came up with because if we didn't the corporations would destroy the environment, break the law, and kill people with lax safety standards and zero accountability) and they have much more power to interfere with others and engage in antisocial behavior.

Corporations require government protection. Few people in a free society would choose to do business with a an entity where nobody has any accountability. I would insist on dealing with an organization where an individual(s) were personally accountable for their actions... this is the exact opposite of a corporation (limited liability company). Corporations, like government, are just constructs of the mind... men pollute the environment and slack off on safety standards not corporations and government.

If you decided to invest in my business idea and I tell you that you are actually going to be lending money to my imaginary friend Fred you probably would be hesitant to do this. If the business failed I would just throw up my hands and say it was Freds fault sorry about your money, but, don't worry I've got another imaginary friend Kevin who is much better with money. Of course this is a ridiculous notion, but, it is essentially the idea behind corporations.

One last observation. You seem to suggest that people are generally bad, or, at least require the threat of violence to keep them in line. Yet you say that you yourself behave in socially acceptable ways and you would even encourage others to act in ways that were good and fair. You don't seem to require the threat of violence to act in ways which I would consider to be ethical. Do you think that you are different than those around you in this regard? or, Do you think that we need the threat of violence in society to protect us from psychopaths, or those who are otherwise socially deranged?

 

[adamruth]

The Thing was the government of Iceland. When the government is corporatised, you've got a plutocracy, or at least a corporatocracy (yes, it's a real word - check Wikipedia). It's like I said before, even in a free market, people will govern and be governed.

Interesting counterpoint: W. L. Gore & Associates.

Of course there will always be government, in the sense of things being governed. All organisations (families, clubs, companies) have a government. The objection isn't with that, it's with violent monopolistic government.

The kind of anarchy I'm talking about is not a complete absence of order and organisation, but instead is government in the market. Right now, if I don't like how Target is treating me, I can start shopping at Big W. If I don't like that, I can shop online, or go to K-Mart, or whatever. This isn't complete and absolute choice, I'm still limited to what people want to offer. The market may not provide a necktie in the exact shade of purple I want, but I can at least get a purple tie.

No so with the state. Choice is extremely limited, due to the prohibitively high barrier of entry and the tight vendor lock-in. Starting new government is almost completely impossible, and changing from one government to another very difficult and expensive.

Iceland had a much better system where you could freely switch between clans, if you felt you were getting a raw deal, and you could do it without moving. Laws weren't about punishment as much as they were about restitution.

What I want to see is governments having to compete with each other for citizens. If it was relatively easy to move from one jurisdiction to another, a state would be much more inclined to listen to the wants and needs of the people. Voting is a very ham fisted way to measure public choice, it's a game that's rigged in favour of the elite. Voting with your feet is the only really worthwhile form of voting (on the scale of nations, anyway).

 

[Tim Moen]

Of course there will always be government, in the sense of things being governed. All organisations (families, clubs, companies) have a government. The objection isn't with that, it's with violent monopolistic government.

The kind of anarchy I'm talking about is not a complete absence of order and organisation, but instead is government in the market. Right now, if I don't like how Target is treating me, I can start shopping at Big W. If I don't like that, I can shop online, or go to K-Mart, or whatever. This isn't complete and absolute choice, I'm still limited to what people want to offer. The market may not provide a necktie in the exact shade of purple I want, but I can at least get a purple tie.

No so with the state. Choice is extremely limited, due to the prohibitively high barrier of entry and the tight vendor lock-in. Starting new government is almost completely impossible, and changing from one government to another very difficult and expensive.

Iceland had a much better system where you could freely switch between clans, if you felt you were getting a raw deal, and you could do it without moving. Laws weren't about punishment as much as they were about restitution.

What I want to see is governments having to compete with each other for citizens. If it was relatively easy to move from one jurisdiction to another, a state would be much more inclined to listen to the wants and needs of the people. Voting is a very ham fisted way to measure public choice, it's a game that's rigged in favour of the elite. Voting with your feet is the only really worthwhile form of voting (on the scale of nations, anyway).

Yeah!... what Adam said. I'm going to excuse myself from this thread for the time being and let Adam do the talking.

 

[Beerina]

The analogy er... rather fails at some fundamental points.

Actually, it's virtually identical, a point I'd like to make.



They (individual religions and individual political parties/persuasions) are both the same kind of gigantic composite memes of massive worldviews whose purpose is to induce the meme's reproduction via spreading. Hence they both adopt ideas that lead to spreading to others by way of force and by way of ethical posturing.

The meme's complex "idea", i.e. the massive worldview mental model, induces behavior that engenders the meme's spread. In your mind (i.e. your mental worldview) you do something for some "virtual" reason, but the real reason (i.e. the net effect in the real world) aids the meme's spread, regardless of how well your behavior and its real effect match what should happen, or you believe is happening, in your mental model.


They both claim to know the "best way to behave". They both take advantage of human tendencies to desire approval by others by way of suggesting moral failure for not following them.

They both adopt some component ideas that are beneficial to individuals or people in general that happen to work, and others that "sound good" but may not only not work, but be actually harmful. But as long as the harm isn't too great, that part of the worldview aids the spread of the master meme more than hinders it. Hence religions and political persuasions are akin to parasites.



Witness the angry reactions one gets by theists when skeptics pose simple questions in their forums, and compare to the angry reactions when core political beliefs are questioned.

There's a reason they're identical. Because they are one and the same phenomenon. Remember that to a meme, the accuracy of a piece of the mental worldview with respect to the real world is largely irrelevant. As long as it "works" in the worldview, and doesn't fail too obviously or badly in the real world, it serves as an advantage to the meme's propagation, rather than a hindrance.

For example, for religion, the component part about "if you believe hard enough, xxx will happen" (healing, walk on water, fly a mountain about on command, whatever) obviously doesn't work in reality (ahh, meme has it covered. You didn't believe hard enough!) And very few people nowadays actually die from medical causes that could be healed by medicine, because of faith. Centuries earlier, there were very few other viable options, other than doing nothing, so even if faith killed more (by, say, whipping the demons out) than doing nothing way back when, it was only slightly more.


For politics, one might consider a thing some skeptics are aware of: the government devoting massive resources to make sure every child gets some education, when devoting just a fraction of that to the highly advanced children would yield spectacularly better overall benefit to society. But that would detract from the meme's spread since it would contradict the worldview portion about fairness (and gosh them smart kids are mostly from middle-to-upper class families anyway!) and privilege and "they already got theirs!" and so on. This could lead to more loss of votes, and thus fewer elections the meme "wins" as a political worldview.

So cast away it is.


There are plenty of other examples for both, including my own pet project, that socialized medicine (i.e. forced reduction of profits) will result in slower technological growth in medicine, and thus end up hurting "society" far more than guaranteeing medical care for everyone would help. A paltry 10% slowdown would lead to what, a hundred million or more needless deaths after a century? How many would die today if they had 1998 medical tech available? Or 1988? Or 1978? 1978-level care is only a 30% slowdown away, which is trivial for massive government intervention to do. But even as massive as that is, the deaths are phantom deaths that would live some alternate timeline, as it were. And thus serve less purpose to the meme's reproduction-via-election than a few good sob stories in front of the cameras, today. That medical tech is shared around the world helps mask the problem, too, as the socialized medicine countries don't fall behind the other ones generating more of the advances.

And the meme leaned back and smiled.


Now back to the political issue of the socialized medicine, and observe what happens: This crushes the worldview of certain people out there. If their idea leads to hundreds of millions of needless deaths over a century, then they cannot be good people. But their worldview tells them they are good people. It tells them socialized medicine is a benefit, not a liability. They have a massive emotional investment in it.

So, like a religious person who believes God must be good, and therefore there's a reason he let that girl get raped and murdered, so too the political person thinks, "I know this is a good thing, and therefore all I need do is search for the first half-decent explanation that suits my mind and lets me keep my warm and fuzzy feeling about my good character.



If I ram down the religious person's throat statements like, "Well, how can God be ethical letting that baby be put in the microwave?", the religious have never answered yet beyond "there must be a reason, but we don't know it yet, or cannot understand it." I never hear from them again.

If I ram down the political person's throat statements like, "Well, last century was crammed with hundreds of economic "experiments" that showed restricting profits and freedom correlates directly and quite well with slowing economic development", they heave out another repeat of their bluster, and I never hear from them again.




Although this memetic analysis might be somewhat new, what's not new is the idea that you can swap religion for politics by replacing "God" with "The People" and "rewarded in the afterlife" with "rewarded 5-10 years from now".

Both never quite seem to get there. Both completely ignore your right to freedom*. Freedom means you can choose not to follow the meme. This causes the meme to not spread as much, or at all, anymore. So the memes have a tendency to adopt worldview components that allow them to enforce themselves.** Emphasis on "force".

This is why various political worldviews seek to force their component pieces on everyone, by, say, requiring to join the one and only allowed government health care plan***. This is also why religion, in the Middle East among other places, where it hasn't given up the legal power to enforce, is kicking back so violently. The very belief that religion should be separate from government, so popular in the west (that's the various Western political memes telling you that power should be reserved for politics, and you should hold that as a value) is derided with claims that it'll make God mad at us if we do that to our religion-in-charge-meme over here.

Ayn Rand (your political meme probably tells you to consider her misguided at best, and her "followers" as drooling slaves, and you feel good about yourself when you do) noted this, more or less, when she said, "There should be separation of economics and state, just as there is between religion and state, and for exactly the same reason." She realized why they were, in fact, superficially different aspects of exactly the same phenomenon.



I now await reactionary constructions from your religious and/or political worldview memes, defending them, as to why I should not be free.






* The two memes fought a massive war in the West that politics won by stripping religion of it's legal authority. Authority it retained for itself, of course, which was what it was all about.

** It's interesting that "deconstructionists" almost got it right, now that I think about it. They just focused on typical hatred issues like sexism and power struggles, when in fact, those were just part of the meme's idea (worldview) vs. reality (behavior) factor, along with many, many others.

*** "Hey, some European countries have a basic government coverage, but you can buy better care with your own money!" "Oh yeah? Well, ummm, let's add single-payer to the meme." So "health care for everyone!", which has absolutely nothing to do with outlawing care for those who get it already, becomes "Socialized, single-payer medicine". Now there's no escape. Experimentation in Canada shows upwards of 98% after a few years will refuse to give it up, even as it fails and illegal medicine-for-pay shops spring up, openly, like popcorn.

 

[adamruth]

I keep seeing that objective morality don't exist and so utilitarianism is the answer.

That doesn't make much sense. For utilitarianism to work, it requires an objective standard by which to judge "good" and "bad." Thus it has the same problems as objective morality. If you believe in only relative morality, you must also believe in only relative utility.

I think that's why most people who claim to be utilitarians are really just mob rule types, making right with their might and tallying up the utility to suit their whims.

 

[adamruth]

Yeah!... what Adam said. I'm going to excuse myself from this thread for the time being and let Adam do the talking.

Thanks, but please don't stop! I really like what you have to say.

 

[paximperium]

I keep seeing that objective morality don't exist and so utilitarianism is the answer.

That doesn't make much sense. For utilitarianism to work, it requires an objective standard by which to judge "good" and "bad." Thus it has the same problems as objective morality. If you believe in only relative morality, you must also believe in only relative utility.

Yawn. So are you or are you not able to justify "objective morality"?

The simple objective way to determine "good" vs. "bad" is benefit vs. harm. That can be measured and studied.

As for Relative Utlity, yeah sure. As times and situation change, the benefit or harm of certain actions change leading to a change in morality. Why is that a problem?

Now your turn to justify "objective morality".

I think that's why most people who claim to be utilitarians are really just mob rule types, making right with their might and tallying up the utility to suit their whims.

Except for the fact that entire statement is complete and utter garbage. Yeah sure.

 

[adamruth]

[inanity deleted]. So are you or are you not able to justify "objective morality"?

Not.

The simple objective way to determine "good" vs. "bad" is benefit vs. harm. That can be measured and studied.

Benefit and harm are just different words for good and bad. They can only be measured if you have something objective to measure them against.

For example, if a company has to choose between having a layoff or not is not cut and dry. Is it better to lay off 100 so that the remaining 900 still have a job, or is it better lower the wages of everyone? What about the effects of a layoff or company failure in the community? Perhaps it would be better for the company to fail because the pieces could be picked up by another company that could employ 2,000 at better wages, maybe not. Is it most important to consider the benefit to the employees, their families, the city, the state, the nation, or the world? Benefit and harm are simply impossible to quantify in even a simple case such as this.

What we really can't measure is the opportunity cost. Each person can measure their own, but you can't measure another person's.

Adam Smith said it best about the "man of system":

He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it.

 

[phantomb]

As I said, the only real moral argument for government is "Might makes right."

No. The moral argument for government (if you want to call it that) is "the people who live in a society are allowed to decide the rules for that society."

Government doesn't choose to take control, we all choose to put government in control.

 

[adamruth]

No. The moral argument for government (if you want to call it that) is "the people who live in a society are allowed to decide the rules for that society."

Government doesn't choose to take control, we all choose to put government in control.

Exactly. Of all of the competing factions wanting to make the rules, it's the one with the most might that end up making the rules.

 

[arthwollipot]

Of course there will always be government, in the sense of things being governed. All organisations (families, clubs, companies) have a government. The objection isn't with that, it's with violent monopolistic government.

The kind of anarchy I'm talking about is not a complete absence of order and organisation, but instead is government in the market. Right now, if I don't like how Target is treating me, I can start shopping at Big W. If I don't like that, I can shop online, or go to K-Mart, or whatever. This isn't complete and absolute choice, I'm still limited to what people want to offer. The market may not provide a necktie in the exact shade of purple I want, but I can at least get a purple tie.

No so with the state. Choice is extremely limited, due to the prohibitively high barrier of entry and the tight vendor lock-in. Starting new government is almost completely impossible, and changing from one government to another very difficult and expensive.

Iceland had a much better system where you could freely switch between clans, if you felt you were getting a raw deal, and you could do it without moving. Laws weren't about punishment as much as they were about restitution.

What I want to see is governments having to compete with each other for citizens. If it was relatively easy to move from one jurisdiction to another, a state would be much more inclined to listen to the wants and needs of the people. Voting is a very ham fisted way to measure public choice, it's a game that's rigged in favour of the elite. Voting with your feet is the only really worthwhile form of voting (on the scale of nations, anyway).

Okay, thanks for clarifying that. I got the impression that you thought all government was bad - or rather, that you felt that all government had a tendency to become violent monopolistic government. I disagree with you about voting though. With America's strange version of democracy, it may be the case, but not universally.

I keep seeing that objective morality don't exist and so utilitarianism is the answer.

That doesn't make much sense. For utilitarianism to work, it requires an objective standard by which to judge "good" and "bad." Thus it has the same problems as objective morality. If you believe in only relative morality, you must also believe in only relative utility.

I think that's why most people who claim to be utilitarians are really just mob rule types, making right with their might and tallying up the utility to suit their whims.

I agree with what paximperium said, except more politely. Utilitarianism itself is a goals-based morality. It may be a more rational version of it than some other systems, but it's certainly not the only alternative to objective morality.

 

[paximperium]

Not.

So you are not able to justify your claim? Fair enough.

Benefit and harm are just different words for good and bad. They can only be measured if you have something objective to measure them against.

Yes. That measure is objective but how we weigh each measure itself is relative and changes with each society. It is for this reason that memes are so important.

For example, if a company has to choose between having a layoff or not is not cut and dry. Is it better to lay off 100 so that the remaining 900 still have a job, or is it better lower the wages of everyone? What about the effects of a layoff or company failure in the community? Perhaps it would be better for the company to fail because the pieces could be picked up by another company that could employ 2,000 at better wages, maybe not. Is it most important to consider the benefit to the employees, their families, the city, the state, the nation, or the world? Benefit and harm are simply impossible to quantify in even a simple case such as this.

Actually it is completely possible to quantify the benefit and harm to each employee, city, state etc. with each decision. It is the measure of how we weigh these benefits or harm that is completely subjective.

What we really can't measure is the opportunity cost. Each person can measure their own, but you can't measure another person's.

Nonsense. Opportunity cost can be measured against each other. It is relative to one another.

 

[phantomb]

I don't believe this would meet the standard of universality. For poisoning your neighbour to be universally prefereable it would likely have to be in the rationale self interest of everybody to poison their neighbours otherwise it would just be individually preferable.

You fail. If what is universally preferable (moral) is based on "the rationale self interest of everybody", something that is always changing, then there is no objective morality.

But that does raise a good criticism about what goals should be. I think I would throw in with Rand on this one and say that the goal should be rational self interest, which, would probably include living a long life to full potential. If your goal does not align with rationale self interest it wouldn't be universally preferable. Again I think science can more clearly define what rational self interest is.

Okay, and what happens when it becomes the rational self interest of every Human to kill their neighbors? Let's say that all Humans are infected with a deadly disease that can only be cured by killing another Human and using their blood, everyone must kill one other person or all of Humanity dies.Is that act now moral?

I'll say again, you fail. What you're describing is almost a parallel to my "what is moral is what a society has collectively decided is moral".

Let me stress again I am not claiming to know with certainty that I know what universally preferable behviour is, anymore than I know the laws physics.

But you are claiming that it exists objectively and follows certain laws despite the fact that you refuse to tell me where you're getting the information that you do have from.

Sorry I thought I gave an adequate answer. You determine morality through scientific testing and rules of logic. You posit a hypothesis then you test it. This is the same for any scientific theory.

Did you not read what I wrote? What are you testing and why?

You personally believe in truth and reality and so do I. I take it one step further and say that I would like everybody else to as well. As an emotional, irrational creature I understand my personal fallability (I believed in a god for nearly 30 years) so I understand that science is better at accessing reality than I am.

Well, I've got some bad news for you then. Science has nothing to say about morality, and if anything, science tells us that the universe appears to be materialistic.

I guess you would have to define 'right', but, I know (in-so-far as anyone can know anything) that eating is necessary for life and therefore in one's rational self-interest.

And killing someone with a healthy heart is necessary for the life of someone who has no chance of getting one through a transplant list. Is that moral too?

I would say I'm fairly certain that non-aggression is in everyones rational self-interest... but, this may not be true... I'm asking for some evidence that it is not true.

I don't think anyone is saying that random aggression should be allowed, I think everyone is saying that it is not necessarily a universal axiom of an objective morality.

This is a good point, if I am to advance a moral theory the entire onus is upon me to support. I believe property rights to be an extension of self-ownership.

Why, can you prove it objectively?

I am pretty sure that I own myself.

Why, can you prove it objectively?

If I ingest food I think most would agree that I own that bolus of food that is being digested and absorbed by my body.

Why, can you prove it objectively?

I also require shelter and warmth and so I think as minimum I need to own those things which would allow me to survive.

Just because you need something doesn't make it true. After that, why do you own those things? Can you prove it objectively?

Beyond that I think that I own the product of the mixture of my labor and raw material (John Locke's view).

Why, can you prove it objectively?

If I grow some corn, or build a hut by myself I think that it would be difficult to prove why I should relinquish my possession of this property to someone else. Land rights are more difficult to prove, I'm not sure that claim staking grants someone property rights. I suppose it is a pragmatic way of attempting to resolve property disputes.

I'm going to just go ahead and assume that you are unable to prove any ethical concept objectively. To respond to this paragraph, I can claim that nobody owns anything. You can explain why the idea of property rights is a good one, but this is far from proving that property rights are a universal axiom of an objective morality.

Aggression is the initiation of force. In other words whatever you do that requires others, you must get their voluntary consent. "Aggression" and "defense" could become ambiguos in situations where survival, or, well being are not immediately threatened I suppose. I think there are pragmatic ways of resolving these disputes while science sorts out more objective answers.

Well I disagree. I think that the term is ambiguous means that your axiom would fail at functioning as the moral cornerstone of a society.

I hope you aren't calling me a self-serving *********. Your comments seem to be moving from the realm of honest curiousity and mutual discovery to using sarcastic devices, and mischaracterizations and maybe even insults.

Ah, no, that was not my intention. I simply meant that it would be the children who would grow up to be self-serving and without respect. I don't think you've ever said anything here that could be seen as disrespecting anyone. Your problem is with the system, not the people. I apologize to you, and to anyone else who interpreted my statement that way.

As for my use of sarcasm, I think sarcasm is perfectly fine if it does a better job of illustrating an argument than regular prose would.

As a leader you can get instant respect through coercion and instillation of fear. This is true of parenting children and this is true of leading men on a fire ground. My experience has been that other people (including children) perform much better when they want to be lead by someone who exudes virtue, rather than when they are forced to obey a tryant. Maybe your experience with raising children teaches you that regular spankings and other violent outburst creates better children, but, my experience doesn't.

Actually, I don't have any children (uh-oh, there goes my credibility on this issue), but I think that most of those methods that you are demonizing have been used for thousand of years because they work.

I wouldn't be determining guilt or innocence, just, whether the guilt or innocence of a person mattered to me. If I cared enough about it I would pay for an investigation.

Fine, I will amend my statement:

"Yes that's right, if you think a murder is justified then you shouldn't bother paying for an investigation. It doesn't matter if you're an educated lawyer or a 19 year old burger flipper, you should get to decide whether someone should be investigated for breaking the law"

Well since both parties have paid for his services and many other clients would be watching the proceedings, I would imagine the incentive would be high to engage in fair proceedings or lose livlihood.

What if one party bribes the arbitrators with double the money that the other party is offering? What if the other party has no money at all? What if one party has their own personal army who would get in the way of the arbitration organization taking them in?

Why would there be other clients watching? Do you see the general public (the clients) today caring about, much less watching, legal proceedings in the courts?

And again, what if this arbitration organization is in the pocket of the corporations and the super rich? Sure, everybody would know it, but what could they do. The corporations and the rich control everything?

If you were sufficiently frightened of the rich then you would join a dispute resolution organization with a million other fearful individuals that would collectively have way more money than one rich guy.

Hmm. A group of people deciding on a set of common rules and enforcing them while sharing resources to protect themselves. Sounds kind of like a society with a government. And a government would be required, in this, otherwise decisions to use the collective power would be too complicated and time consuming.

Huh? This doesn't happen now and we have people with absolute power and relative impunity, why would it happen in a society where everybody was accountable?

This doesn't happen now because the people with the power are kept in check by society and the government. Not that I'm saying our governments aren't plagued by a huge amount of corruption.

All the more reason to prevent these people from gaining a monopoly on force (government). In a free society people who cared about lining their own pockets would have to ensure virtuous behaviour or others would not give them money. Instead of the corrupt getting richer, the virtuous would get richer IMO.

When have the virtuous ever been in a better position to become richer than the corrupt? Right now these people are controlled by the status quo. In the past, when aristocracy has gone too far it has led to bloody revolution which regardless of the outcome is bad for all corporations.

In a "free" society, people who care about lining their own pockets would use their wealth to control the country on the backs of the virtuous. Again, we came up with the idea of regulation because without it, corporations will break the law, destroy the environment, and do dangerous things.

Corporations require government protection. Few people in a free society would choose to do business with a an entity where nobody has any accountability.

Yes, well back in the real world, people don't care who they deal with as long as get a good deal.

I would insist on dealing with an organization where an individual(s) were personally accountable for their actions... this is the exact opposite of a corporation (limited liability company). Corporations, like government, are just constructs of the mind... men pollute the environment and slack off on safety standards not corporations and government.

Yes, I believe that you, the virtuous person, would insist on that. What about everybody else.

The problem with every concept for a society be it democracy, communism, anarchy, libertarianism, etc. is people. If people were all benevolent, then every single society in the world would function almost as well as any other.

If you decided to invest in my business idea and I tell you that you are actually going to be lending money to my imaginary friend Fred you probably would be hesitant to do this. If the business failed I would just throw up my hands and say it was Freds fault sorry about your money, but, don't worry I've got another imaginary friend Kevin who is much better with money. Of course this is a ridiculous notion, but, it is essentially the idea behind corporations.

What? Are you arguing that corporations don't exist now?

One last observation. You seem to suggest that people are generally bad, or, at least require the threat of violence to keep them in line. Yet you say that you yourself behave in socially acceptable ways and you would even encourage others to act in ways that were good and fair. You don't seem to require the threat of violence to act in ways which I would consider to be ethical. Do you think that you are different than those around you in this regard? or, Do you think that we need the threat of violence in society to protect us from psychopaths, or those who are otherwise socially deranged?

Both.

I think that I am different than those around me in this regard. I had parents who raised me to act in the ways that we both consider ethical and had a good and privileged childhood, my family was upper middle class which meant that I had the time and the resources to study the world and learn things without having to start work to support my family or worry about what we were going to eat that night, I was so privileged that I was able to get a good education as well, and after all that I was lucky enough to get a job good enough that I have almost no debts at all and will probably never have to worry about money for the rest of my life. I was lucky enough to have all those things, but most people are not.

I think we need laws (the threat of violence) to keep people in line because I think that a good number of people wouldn't remain in line without them. Why else would we have invented laws in the first place?

Specifically, I advocate the use of draconian laws (especially as punishment for white collar crimes) because I think they are the best method for decreasing the amount of unnecessary crime.

 

[adamruth]

Okay, thanks for clarifying that. I got the impression that you thought all government was bad - or rather, that you felt that all government had a tendency to become violent monopolistic government. I disagree with you about voting though. With America's strange version of democracy, it may be the case, but not universally.

I think it has much to do with all the baggage on the word anarchist. I keep swearing off the label, but all other labels require just as much explaining. In many ways it has the same problems as atheist: anarchist is to chaos as atheist is to immorality. But both in their literal form have very simple meanings, ones which are far too often misunderstood. Maybe I'll coin a new word, agnostarchist. Now how's that for flowing trippingly off the tongue?

I do think that all existing governments are violent monopolies, though not all conceivable forms of government are. That's true of any system where one person is given authority over another. Checks and balances, at best, reduce the tendency but cannot eliminate it. The liberal Western democracies are on the low end of violent monopoly, to be sure, but they aren't free of it.

I view democracy as a huge step forward from all the other systems that have been tried on a big scale. But, the problem is that it doesn't really have any method to evolve into something better. That's perfectly fine if you think that democracy is the pinnacle of social development. But I don't, so I'm interested in systems for creating new systems. I don't know what the best possible form of government looks like, but I do have some ideas. I don't think anyone can foresee what it would be. The only way to generate the best system is to have an optimising system generator. That's what the market is. No one could have predicted the amazing phenomenon of Wikipedia, least of all its creators. Those kinds of innovations in governance will simply not come from a top-down structure, and democracy is not much more bottom-up than its uglier predecessors.

Democracy is flawed in at least two other ways. First, it doesn't scale. One vote in 100,000,000 is completely worthless. You're many times more likely to be killed going to vote than affect the result. Even one vote in 10,000 has very little value. Representative republics were meant to alleviate (not eliminate) this, but the pressure is constantly on them to devolve into straight democracy. Second, they're all or nothing, and republics don't help with this. In an election it's winner take all, while in the market you and I can make very different votes with our feet and both get what we want.

I agree with what paximperium said, except more politely. Utilitarianism itself is a goals-based morality. It may be a more rational version of it than some other systems, but it's certainly not the only alternative to objective morality.

I think we agree, I just think it's a mistake to propose objective utilitarianism as an alternative to objective morality when they both suffer from the same flaw (the "objective" part).

 

[arthwollipot]

I think we agree, I just think it's a mistake to propose objective utilitarianism as an alternative to objective morality when they both suffer from the same flaw (the "objective" part).

Yep, I think we're in violent agreement.

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time. - Winston Churchill