Do Some Situations Warrant the Use of Criminal Organizations?

[asianboy]

Or is it that contacting criminals are always wrong?

To add to the discussion, I would like to post a video. Note that crappy advices like "go to the court again" won't work for the poor gentleman. If I understand the law correctly, what the desperate gentleman was doing was illegal, but was it immoral?



"Leave this to Clemenza...I mean we're not murderers, despite what that undertaker thinks..." - Vito Corleone

[KingDave]

Or is it that contacting criminals are always wrong?

To add to the discussion, I would like to post a video. Note that crappy advices like "go to the court again" won't work for the poor gentleman. If I understand the law correctly, what the desperate gentleman was doing was illegal, but was it immoral?



"Leave this to Clemenza...I mean we're not murderers, despite what that undertaker thinks..." - Vito Corleone

Yes. Law and morality are one and the same. End of discussion.

Close thread.

[Enemy of the State]

Yes. Law and morality are one and the same. End of discussion.

Close thread.

What? No, law and morality are very different things. Laws are rarely moral really.

[Enemy of the State]

The point of written law is to codify morality.

Morality doesn't come from the state.

[KingDave]

If they were there would be no drug prohibition, no taxes, no death penalty, no conscription.

There is no conscription or death penalty in my country.

Taxes are moral. They gave you your education, provide you with health care and you know, paid for the creation of this little thing called the Internet.

Drug prohibition is moral. Many believe it is the best way to control substance abuse. I disagree but the fact is that becoming addicted to heroin and costing me million in taxes is immoral, so trying to prevent that is very moral.

Nice try though Captain Anarchy.

[Enemy of the State]

Reply to my edit. Do you accept as right anything that is passed into law?

[Time Commander Bob]

The point of written law is to codify morality.

And yet many laws have existed (and still exist in many parts of the world - including western countries) that many people today consider either immoral in themselves or that there is nothing immoral about breaking them.

Whether the point of law is to codify morality is another matter, but even if we accept this is the case (which does take quite a rigid definition of "morality") you cannot guarantee that governments will pass laws that codify morality (ie they may miss the purpose of law) and thus it is perfectly reasonable to presume that in some circumstances it may be moral to break the law.

[KingDave]

And yet many laws have existed (and still exist in many parts of the world - including western countries) that many people today consider either immoral in themselves or that there is nothing immoral about breaking them.

Whether the point of law is to codify morality is another matter, but even if we accept this is the case (which does take quite a rigid definition of "morality") you cannot guarantee that governments will pass laws that codify morality (ie they may miss the purpose of law) and thus it is perfectly reasonable to presume that in some circumstances it may be moral to break the law.

It is never moral to break the law. It is moral to believe that the laws need changing and to work towards changing them.

AND you can guarantee that governments will pass laws that are moral from societies standards as a whole. Not everyone shares those views of morality however.

Reply to my edit. Do you accept as right anything that is passed into law?

I never implied morality comes from the State. Morality is a social construct. The State simply codifies and enforces what the majority believe is moral.

[chilon]

I never implied morality comes from the State. Morality is a social construct. The State simply codifies and enforces what the majority believe is moral.

This is an idealistic view of law and the State. I would even say very idealistic.

More accurate to reality would be to say that Laws codify a structure for society that the ruling party chooses.

[Bovril]

The state often acts in ways thatare, according to its own laws, illegal. Laws are made by wealthy individuals whose power is assured by donations by even wealthier individuals. This is a class analysis, but the same could be said of race, gender, impairment, religion, age, sexuality, ethnicity, etc. Of course the laws of the state reflect the systematic selection bias of politics and have no objective foundation in morality, either absolute morality, or the morality of the majority.

So where does this leave us as regards this clip. I happen to think that revenge is not a legitimate motive for social activites. Consequently, an organisation that caters to the vengefull impulse (in this case the mafia) is illegimate. But the same criticism applies to the state justice system. Social institutions should advance social goods, not cater to the animosity of individuals. Reforming criminals and providing deterants is a social good. Letting relatives of victims indulge their sadism is not.

[Helm]

Law and morality are the same thing providing whoevers making the laws are moral. And there's always disagreements on what exactly is moral.

[Bovril]

Law and morality are the same thing providing whoevers making the laws are moral.

That is essentially a tautology. It can be reduced to the statement 'good people do good things', or 'goodness is good'. I'm afraid it gets us nowhere.

[Helm]

At least with a democracy the government reflects the values of the majority, that said the Germans did vote in Hitler, but it normally works out.

[Bovril]

At least with a democracy the government reflects the values of the majority, that said the Germans did vote in Hitler, but it normally works out.

The word values is too ephemeral to be useful in political discourse. But say we substitute the word opinions for it, your statement would still be grossly untrue. In the UK, opposition to the Iraq qar, trident, anti-terror legislation, privitisation of education and healthcare, and so on and so forth has been by the by because the public have no say in such issues.

[Helm]

If people didn't like all those things you mentioned they had the option of voting for the Liberal Democrats, though of course that would be a wasted vote.

[Bovril]

If people didn't like all those things you mentioned they had the option of voting for the Liberal Democrats, though of course that would be a wasted vote.

Equally if people didn't like those things they had the option of occupying the ministry of defence and trying Blair and his generals according to the standards of Nuremburg. But let's be realistic. Political parties win or lose mainly based on garnering contributions from the super richand by towing the line of the corporate media. This is simply because information access is so limited in our society, and sdiscourse so narrow. Most people don't know that other people agree with them that, for example, contracting out the cleaning of hospital wards is a bad thing. Popular discourse and culture is dominated by means of production that systematically deny people the ability to get together over these issues, or even to learn about them. So let's not pretend that political parties are representative or that we have an even playing field for al ideas.

[godol shmok]

Immoral is when laws are not enforced which is the basic situation of the scene. The enforcement of laws starts best with oneself. Laws can insofar serve as moral regulatives and ethics or morals as an (inner) extension of laws. Contacting criminals would conflict with that demand.

[Exarch]

Or is it that contacting criminals are always wrong?

To add to the discussion, I would like to post a video. Note that crappy advices like "go to the court again" won't work for the poor gentleman. If I understand the law correctly, what the desperate gentleman was doing was illegal, but was it immoral?



"Leave this to Clemenza...I mean we're not murderers, despite what that undertaker thinks..." - Vito Corleone

i rememebr reading somewhere tho i cant remember where
that 'the mafia and the CIA are often the opposite sides of the same coin'

[Nietzsche]

I think many in this thread are confusing Law with Justice. They are not the same thing. It's a very important distinction.

[godol shmok]

You make a good point. It is for practical purposes a distinction we should suppress, however, when we reflect on questions on the niveau of individual ethics because justice is the outworking of an equilibrium or a consensus between claims and demands in relation to laws. It is possible that justice and ethics disagree indeed. Ethics and law should not conflict. If justice demands ethical problematic decisions then a law should balance out the conflict. The release of a murderer from prison for the purpose of a higher goal can be justifed under circumstances but such should not be done without a law that allows under cirumstances to do so. It should not be done is the ethical element in such a task.