From Morality to Ethics
From my favourite Libsoc blogger and writer. It is in the Ethos because it is primarily ethics, relative to political organisation. Philosophy as much as politics.
http://francoistremblay.wordpress.com/
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:From morality to ethics… [part 1/3]
Posted on December 1 2010 by Francois Tremblay| Leave a comment
Morality is fairly trivial, because we are all human beings with the same basic needs. There are areas of disagreement, but these tend to be fairly irrelevant at the moral level. Most moral disagreements are of the type “how is it not in your interest to hurt other people/become a dictator,” or similar nonsense, and are pretty easily answered (I will discuss later how these disagreements relate to one’s conception of ethics).
Most disputes on questions of morality actually concern ethics, that is to say, they concern objecting to other people’s behaviour, not one’s own. Ethics is a lot more interesting, because it involves dealing with other human beings with their own sets of values. As an individual looking at my own values, I don’t have too much concern about other people’s values, but as an individual looking at my society (or any other society, for that matter), I must necessarily have great concerns about other people’s values, because those values cause patterns of action within my society.
Obviously we disagree with certain of those patterns, and not with others, so the question becomes: on what basis do we support some people’s actions and condemn others? There is no a priori basis for supporting or rejecting someone else’s values, except by saying that they are like ours, but this seems rather arbitrary, since we often support people’s actions even when they are motivated by values we do not hold. Furthermore, there’s no reason to believe that the society that supports one’s values is a society where everyone agrees with them; in fact, it seems equally as likely that a society which cultivates a wide variety of values would be more beneficial to any single individual’s values.
We must therefore examine our values and how they lead us to a certain conception of ethics. Now obviously I don’t expect everyone who reads this to follow the same values I do, so everything I will say on the topic will be mainly personal in nature. I think, however, that there will be rough agreement on what I have to say.
First, we want to live in a society where our physical needs, mental needs, and social needs, are supported; otherwise there would be no point in living in society at all. Not only that, but we should naturally seek a social form which maximally helps fulfill these needs (i.e. if there are a number of social forms which help fulfill our needs, we should seek out the one which does so the most adequately), just as we are interested in being at full health instead of partial health, shelter which shelters us completely instead of partially, enough leisure time to enjoy our lives instead of less, friendships which fulfill our social needs completely instead of only partially, and so on.
This means that what we are looking for is a society that maximizes freedom, that is to say, the range and depth of possibilities of the individual. This implies a society where possibilities are not artificially limited, and a society where the multiplication of possibilities is supported. What that means, in clear, is that we want a society where the individual is not stuck in limitations of body, thought, relationships, science, technology, ideology, and so on (note that this does not mean that the individual himself supports or wants to use all of the variety of, say, technology that exists: one can support maximizing freedom while being a primitivist, for example, consensually restricting certain freedoms in order to enhance others). We also want a society which supports the multiplication of ways by which the human being can relate to other humans, to his environment, to the products of work, and to the world of ideas, and supports the human being’s attempts to explore these different ways.
It is here that equality first enters, because I crucially depend on other human beings for the creation and sustenance of my own freedom. If no one else is free, then I cannot be free. And since I want a society which maximally helps fulfill my values, I therefore want everyone to be as free as I want to be. The universality principle confirms this to be the valid deduction. So unless I find any contrary arguments, I must assume that any rule I wish applied to myself, or any freedom I desire for myself, must also apply to all. Whatever maximizes my freedom must maximize everyone else’s freedom, or my freedom is necessarily not maximized. Furthermore, if other people are not free, they will be ordered to fight against me, making any use of freedom ultimately impossible.
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We also have organizational values, and these have a direct relation to ethics. I already went through the reasoning for freedom and equality (which are, after all, the same thing). Here are some other organizational values:
Consent: In order to be free, we must be able to choose which organizations and institutions to support. Also, we know that any system can go wrong, and we need a way to either reform it or disconnect from it. Many States have operated under the pretense of being “based on the consent of the governed,” but we know this is logically impossible. A society which supports freedom must be based on consent. What form this consent takes depends on the nature and scale of the organization, but consent must always be present, directly or indirectly. Otherwise there is no way for the individual to choose what he supports, and no way to reform or disconnect from a social system when it goes astray.
Cooperation: For society to have any reason to exist at all, it must permit cooperation between individuals within a group- or as Anarchists would say, mutual aid- to attain moral aims. Therefore, the existence and spread of cooperation must be supported. We already know that cooperation spreads naturally within groups or societies when it is not hampered, so only liberty (i.e. that the individual not be hampered by some exterior determinism) is needed for this to obtain. For instance, despite the fact that capitalism greatly hinders cooperation between workers and makes it conditional to the acceptance of a non-cooperative planning unit, it still gave rise to a gigantic network of inter-unit cooperation on a scale never seen before in history.
Liberty: What I call liberty, the absence of impositions from any exterior determinism, is basically what American Libertarians would call “negative rights,” freedom from outright coercion. All rules and aims must be cooperatively determined by the individuals involved. There are many different ways to derive liberty: from the disproof of transferring exterior obligation (being impossible for an exterior determinism to impose any moral obligation), from the need for free will (in order to be able to act on one’s values, also see my discussion of consent), from the premise of equality (because coercion necessarily entails that one person’s values are exploited for the sake of another’s), and so on.
Human rights: To understand the concept of rights, it is necessary to start with a basic scenario.
Imagine two individuals A and B. A, the invader, punches B for no reasonable motive. B, the invaded, replies by using proportional force to try to stop or contain A. The question then arises: whose action is justified, A, B, or neither? It is impossible for both to be justified, since each invalidates the other.
In this case, we must side with B, but not because of any particular bias in favour of his values. Indeed, we can freely admit that A and B’s values are equally valid a priori, in accordance with our principle of equality. But it is precisely because of this principle of equality that we must rule against the invader: as an invader, an initiator of force, he is unduly restricting the other fellow’s freedom. Furthermore, in this particular case, A is committing a crime as defined by our natural law. Because of these two facts, we say that B is allowed to use force in self-defense, that his action is justified, and that A’s action is not justified.
This principle, that B is allowed to use force in self-defense against an invader, is a generalization of rights. A right is a justification of force, and all rights concern themselves with determining when it is justified to use force. There are two ways to look at rights: one which is of the “I do not want X” type (also called “negative rights”), which relates to liberty, and the “I want access to X” type (also called “positive rights”), which relates to freedom. Just as liberty and freedom as useless without each other (indeed many people argue that there is really no such distinction), both types of right must co-exist within the same system. It would be unreasonable to recognize, say, the right of an individual to be alive, while refusing him access to vital health care, whether that refusal be the result of capitalist price rationing or government diktat.
The arrangement of human rights which maximize our freedom and everyone else’s freedom is an arrangement where rights correspond to innate natural law, that is to say where rights prevent our freedom from being impeded, and where corresponding access rights are granted. For instance, we naturally recognize that it is wrong for people, either as individuals or groups, to kill, hurt, kidnap, steal from, or defraud others without their consent. By extension, we can look at the behaviour of groups and say that it is wrong for groups to use force to prevent individuals from assembling, speaking freely, working, practicing a given religion, giving aid to each other, engaging in out-norm consensual practices, and so on. These are all things which impede freedom. Therefore we draw the conclusion that there is such a thing as a right to be alive, to be healthy, to move about, to the things we own, to be told the truth in official matters, to assemble, to speak freely, to work, to practice a given religion, to give aid to others, to engage in out-norm consensual practices, and so on. And if there are such rights, then there are also rights to access these resources which make it possible for us to be alive, healthy, to move about, and so on (I will discuss later what exactly this access entails).
Any use of force which is not within the purview of human rights is unjustified. But all A-B exchanges where one is within his rights must be asymmetrical: it cannot be the case that a right justifies A or B’s action and that A and B are both justified. This proves that there cannot be a “right to not be offended,” for instance. If A offends B, and the right is valid, then B is allowed to use force to stop A. But this use of force itself will be offensive to some people, and if A is offended by it, his own retaliation is thereby justified as well. This is a contradiction and therefore such a right is impossible.
Justice: In any large group or society, disputes arise, but those disputes can be resolved peacefully. When disputes cannot be resolved peacefully (or when circumstances prohibit it, such as for violent crimes), we must have some fair way to solve them which prevents violence from spreading and ensures restitution to the victims. The well-being of individuals within that society depends on it. In short: not only must society support mutual aid, but it must also prevent its opposite, mutual harm. And the only logical way to determine how to resolve disputes is by using the natural laws which are innate to human beings (i.e. not to kill, not to steal, to respect other people’s decisions, and so on). The only area of progress is in determining the applications of these laws to new real-life problems, especially technical issues. Any other system of law, proceeding from some exterior determinism, is logically invalid.
Well-being: To me, this term simply means a state of being where the physical, mental and relational needs of the individual are being met, especially physical and mental needs. Well-being, therefore, is directly linked to freedom. For an individual to have well-being, he must have access to those things which help him stay well, especially physically and mentally. We’re talking about things like shelter, food, health care, psychological care, education (not schooling), access to the knowledge accumulated by society, the “pursuit of happiness” or purpose, leisure time, love and sex, the means to communicate and assemble, and so on.
Note that this does not imply that shelter, food, health care, and so on, must be provided by The State/corporations/free/on a monetary basis/capitalistically/socialistically/communistically. Each of these concepts or ideologies must be evaluated on the basis of the principles of ethics we have determined (although to be fair, it should be obvious that hierarchies are already disproven by a number of principles we have established so far, but I will come back to that in a bit).
Respecting human nature: Because the vast majority of our values are the result of needs which come from human nature, it makes no sense to try to implement them in a way that goes counter to human nature. This is not to say that we must follow them to the letter: obviously, technology is not part of human nature but it is perfectly valid. But we also must not fight actively against human nature, as any such attempts are not only doomed to failure but inevitably condemn us to profound dysfunction, and to a dysfunctional society. One simply has to look at the results of fundamentalist Christianity in some parts of the United States to prove it for oneself (the failure of monogamy as a model, and the pressures against homosexuality, are two other examples). To try to dissociate ethics from human nature is a contradiction and can only lead to more contradictions.
This particular piece of work came at just the right time. I've seen misconceptions on the forum from a statement that equality is undesirable, something that arises I believe from an authoritarian move by states to enforce equality of status and income as opposed to equality of freedom; to a statement that freedom in property gives the person liberty to act within that property no matter how it affects others. That a person argues for private property must mean that they don't think other people have the right to damage others property so long as it is done on their property.
The other fact is the distinction between human rights and state provisions. It is not enough to state things are rights and should be provided by a structure without providing adequate research into the broader implications on the rest of society and the rights of individuals and how the provision of such things is feasible and equitable.
The sticking point for most philosophical posters will be the comment on hierarchies. More on that later as he says though it isn't something I have resolved in my own mind.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Posted on December 3 2010 by Francois Tremblay| 1 Comment
Now to talk about ethics proper. So far, I have kept my language as general as possible, and made it clear that I did not argue for one specific worldview or system over others, because I was talking about general logical consequences, not at all about implementation. But now it’s time to start talking about implementation, based on the principles derived.
Ethics concerns itself directly with the rules which we believe should regulate society or sub-groups of society (in the latter case, we use a specific term such as bioethics, medical ethics, business ethics, legal ethics, animal rights, etc). However, social rules dictate the kind of institutions and structures that exist in that society, and the institutions and structures that exist dictate the kind of rules that persist within a society. So there is a direct link between the two: we are also talking about ethics when we look at the desirable structure of society.
The role of an ethical system is to provide the context within which our values can (or cannot, as may be the case) be fulfilled more or less fully. This is why it may be a little complicated to distinguish our individual actions from the greater social context, because our actions are always informed by the rules of society. There is a huge difference between “why should we not permit people to hurt each other?” and “how is it not in your interest to hurt others?”, but the former question informs the latter one, because institutions and structures dictate what is in the person’s self-interest. In a society where you are allowed to gain power over others, it becomes in your personal self-interest to try to gain that power, and then keep it, regardless of how badly it hurts others or society as a whole. So there is a conflict between one’s values and what is good for society when that society is structured in a way such as to permit or encourage the existence and accumulation of power. One’s conception of ethics and one’s normative views on economics, politics, justice, education, and so on, are really reducible to each other.
When we talk about ethics, we are absolutely certain to run into relativist arguments, so it’s important to clarify that issue. People will say that, for instance, culture is the only ethical factor that they recognize: whatever is part of the culture is right. But that’s an authoritarian statement, not really a relativist statement at all, since “culture” in our societies is ultimately determined by the people who have the power to dictate what people must or must not do, which ideas are acceptable and which ideas lie beyond the margins of reasonable discourse, where the “culture” begins and ends. So we’re actually not talking about relativism at all.
But even looking beyond that, we find that the argument only holds weight if we posit that ethical evaluations must be detached from their maker. Obviously all thoughts are relative insofar as they are dependent on a specific mind which has a specific nature. All the thoughts we have are our own thoughts, and only make sense within the context of our mind or a mind similar to ours. Ethical evaluations are thoughts, like any other proposition that exists, and as such are not excluded from that necessity. When I say (or any individual says), therefore, that forced circumcision on newborns, racism, sexism, the wearing of the burka, the brutal and stullifying treatment of children, are wrong, I am necessarily saying this on the basis of our own personal values, not anyone else’s values. How could it be otherwise? Any statement of knowledge is innately personal.
But it would do no good for the relativist to reply that my evaluations are thereby invalid because “they do not apply to that culture, only to your culture.” For one thing, the values we are talking about at such a level are universal: we are talking about things which bring physiological or psychological pain, mental or moral retardation, social or economic inequality, which are all verifiable facts, not about one’s opinion about the best ice cream. For another, it is not at all clear that what I have said so far is culturally accepted: after all, the backbone of my argument is that the desire for freedom and equality necessarily leads to Anarchism, and very few people in my “culture” would agree with me. And finally, this sort of objection participates to a common fallacy which I can describe most simply as “people disagree, therefore there is no actual fact of the matter.” But this is always a non sequitur. The fact that people disagree about something does not mean it has no universal validity. People are divided about such issues as evolution, economics, the germ theory of disease, whether UFOs are alien spacecrafts, and so on. There are even people who still argue that the Earth is flat. And yet it is unreasonable to claim that there must therefore be no actual fact of the matter in any of these cases.
It is not cultural norms or cultural preferences as a whole that are the problem here. There are a great number of cultural norms or cultural preferences which are not violent and which respect the freedom of the individual; the ones I have listed, don’t. Of course, one can always reply that I value non-violence and freedom for cultural reasons, and that therefore my evaluation is worthless. This can go on and on forever, because whatever I bring up, no matter how universal, can be dismissed as “an artefact of culture.” This is just nay-saying, not an argument. If it can be proven that my specific arguments originate in “culture” alone, then there might be an argument to be made. Without this, cultural relativism cannot get off the ground.
I said before that hierarchies have already been disproven by many of the principles I’ve established. I have already defined a hierarchy as being any system where control (force, the threat of force, indoctrination, manipulation, etc) is systemic and directed. This includes virtually all of our institutions and many relational modes. The net result of any hierarchy is to subordinate the freedom of the individual for the good of the elite within that hierarchy; they therefore are opposite to the principles of freedom, equality and liberty that we have already established. Therefore Anarchism, which is defined as the belief that all hierarchies are undesirable, is validated.
Note that this does not mean that people who are subjects to those hierarchies believe they are not free or equal. Of course it is always in the interest of the elites to make their subjects believe that they are free and equal. But it can never be the case that the subjects of a hierarchy, no matter what it is, are free and equal; it is a logical impossibility. There is no such thing as a free citizen, a free consumer or a free worker, a free religious believer, a free child, a free student or a free prisoner (well, that last one is pretty self-evident). All are subject to restrictions on their freedom, which they generally accept based on a belief in some imaginary higher good or under the threat of force, and none of them are the equals of the elite in the hierarchy.
Another sort of objection, that mostly comes from the voluntaryist and “anarcho-capitalist” people, is the “aren’t people free to join hierarchies?” argument. They think that invalidating hierarchies means that one is arguing against freedom in some way. But this is like arguing that people should be free to punch each other in the face; when it’s consensual, it’s called boxing, but when it’s not, it’s called assault. In our current society, there is no possibility of consent to hierarchies, because we depend on obeying them for our survival and our social status (or in the case of religion, used to).
On the other hand, if some people in an Anarchist society are absolutely nostalgic about being ordered around and being under constant threat, they can reproduce the experience in an egalitarian society, as long as everyone consents and does not try to involve anyone else in their weird domination and submission games. It is doubtful that many would participate, unless they had some serious psychological issues. In an Anarchist society, the hierarchies we know today would become the equivalent of BDSM: crap people used to do in earnest but which today looks more disturbing than anything else, and which speaks badly of the participants’ psyche.
Since all hierarchies are wrong, this includes capitalism as well, since the foundation of capitalism is the hierarchy between employers (who own the means of production and centrally plan production) and employees. Not all features of capitalism are directly hierarchical, although they may be disproven in other ways. Usury, for instance, goes against the principle of equality by being founded on the belief that some people (the owners of capital) should be rewarded without providing any labor. And if usury is invalid, then so are property rights, since property rights include usury by definition.
Some Anarchists rave about “direct democracy,” or somesuch, as being better than the representative democracy we have today. But both are totalizing processes, reducing all decision-making to the action of voting, and reducing the complexities of the structure or society to a popularity contest which renders rational discourse irrelevant. All democracies eventually have to nullify consent in some fashion; a consensual democratic system is necessarily unstable because it cannot rationally deal with disagreements, and must rely on coercion to maintain itself. No individual would ever put up with his desires being invalidated two-thirds or more of the time (in a democracy, even if you vote for the winning side, you seldom get what you wanted) if he can just go to another, similar organization where his desires are always taken into account and rarely invalidated.
Now, of course an organization is allowed to have stated goals and general policies, and to exclude people who disagree with them. In a society, for instance, these general policies would be the rights of the individual. But if a person, who agrees with these goals and policies, disagrees with a decision of the group, he should not be forced to either walk in lockstep or get kicked out. That would completely nullify the concept of consent and destroy the point of an egalitarian organization, which is that people can decide for themselves what they want to do, in unmediated relations, with everyone able to look at each other eye to eye, instead of having to walk in lockstep with some kooky leader who controls everyone. Whatever its flavor, democracy is just a somewhat less coercive way, but more mentally damaging way, of controlling people.
In the initial post he deals with a subject close to my heart. In the 'islam sucks' thread I was confronted with the notion that what is right for the culture is right because ultimately everything is subjective and the ethics of the culture are right for the time. Here he identifies the issue perfectly that power informs culture and influences the societal norms in a disruptive fashion and he rubbishes the reductionist relativism argument concisely, at least to my mind.
His arguments about hierarchies particularly within a democracy and the inherent problems with that, I am yet to be convinced that capitalism creates the same inherent problems though. I am keeping my observations brief as I don't want to colour the articles and peoples perceptions of it, and the conclusions they'll draw from it.
There is more to be said on the issue of hierarchies though.
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:Posted on December 5 2010 by Francois Tremblay| 1 Comment
I think it can easily be seen that specific policies can follow this general pattern of reasoning, but let me give you a couple of examples to illustrate this.
“Immigration” policy is always a hot topic in the Western world, because those people we exploit in the colonies somehow have the nerve of knocking at our door to try to get the same sweet deal we got by completely randomly being born in the country of their conquerors. So we rant and rave about “those brown people” and how they come to steal our jobs, how dirty they are, how much they clog the health care system, and so on. It’s a pure racism issue.
But apart from that fact, look at the issue from the perspective of property. We claim that “we,” the paper-wielding inhabitants of a given country (which is actually an arbitrary construct), have the right to dictate who can and cannot enter the country. This can only be true if in some meaningful sense we are claiming the country as property of the government or the people. Of course the government claims property of the territory to begin with, as it claims to be in control of the land and everyone who lives on it, through the laws it enacts, and the taxes it raises, especially real estate taxes. Because it claims this property, it claims to have the right to prevent people from coming in, to exclude people, so they can get some land for themselves. But property rights are nonsense, so it is not valid or legitimate for any government to claim that it has the right to exclude people from the land. If you have a commons, then people may legitimately exclude, but the State is not a commons manager, it is a property manager.
The only correct answer to the so-called “immigration” problem is to stop the insane colonialism and let people in other countries be free to flourish where they live, so they don’t have to uproot themselves and beg for the privileges they were deprived of at home. The long-term solution is to enact a world labor-based currency, establish equal wages around the world, bringing about complete economic equality and thus eradicating poverty and scarcity. These are the only sane, rational answers, and that is why they must never, ever be brought up in political discussions.
Another ever-popular topic is that of “victimless crimes.” On what standard do we determine such crimes? Certainly not according to the standard of natural law, or even Common Law (although to be fair, Common Law did admit of some “victimless crimes” when they were an attack on hierarchies such as property rights or heteronomy). It is a direct attack against the individual’s freedom to accuse him of a “crime” which does not involve attacking other people’s freedom. One person growing and using “illegal drugs” does not limit anyone else’s freedom; in fact, it may support other people’s freedom (one only needs to look at all the creative and scientific people who have used marijuana in their endeavours, as well as all those who have reduced their suffering through using marijuana). However much one complains about prostitution being a dangerous activity (as a direct consequence of it being illegal), no one is being victimized by the sexual act.
It is certainly true that people have always persecuted those who commit acts which go against the present-time mores, mainly because they are offended, but I have already proven that there is no such thing as a right not to be offended. And besides, mores change constantly, therefore they are merely preferences and cannot be considered universal principles.
One may argue that some “victimless crimes” do affect other people’s freedom. Suicide, for example, deprives society of an individual’s contribution. But the freedom of the individual to be in control of his own death is an important freedom and directly concerns the dignity of the individual, especially in cases of suffering. I am not a collectivist: I do not believe that the individual’s values must be subservient to those of the whole. Society must be structured such as to support those values, not subvert them. I personally may try to persuade someone to not kill himself, but I wouldn’t stop them from doing it. I don’t think using force against people for “victimless crimes,” with the inherent power and corruption that this adds to any society, is worth it in any case. Or, if you want a less consequentialist argument, trying to prevent the suicide would be an invasion, and it is reasonable to assume that the principle of not invading anyone unless they have invaded upon you should be the default, because it is more fundamental than that of maximizing everyone else’s freedom a priori.
A lot of political and economic issues are argued from the perspective that “access to resources necessarily conflicts with individual freedom,” and that therefore anyone who takes the opposite side is the enemy. In fact, as I pointed out when I talked about natural rights, access to resources is necessary for individual freedom, and vice-versa. Certainly I understand that someone who wants to hold doctors at gunpoint so they’ll treat him for free is impinging on the individual freedom of those doctors. But surely there are other means to ensure access to resources than by using force on people. The economic system of anarcho-communism, for instance, ensures access without using force, by giving everyone equal access to each other’s production without the rationing use of currency. And that’s only one way of doing things.
More importantly, what does it mean to have a right to access? Take the health care example. It is generally agreed that a “private” health care system is unjust because it is too expensive for large segments of the population. This is a formulation of the problem as a right to access. It is also criticized as being too profit-oriented, although that is a flaw shared by “public” systems in many countries also. On the other hand, a “public” health care system defers all costs to a coercive system of taxation and a gigantic hierarchical bureaucracy. It is slightly better from a right to access standpoint, although severely handicapped by long waiting lines which often result in death, and it is worse from the standpoint of individual freedom, in that it gives total control of one’s health care options to the State and strengthens State power as a whole as well as corporate power (as they have no need to provide health care for the workers when the government does it for them). Both options inflate health care prices beyond the stratosphere, because in both cases the consumer of the services does not directly pay for them (with many very unfortunate exceptions) and therefore does not select for lower prices.
The only reason why the debate keeps being framed as an access to resources and individual freedom issue is because of the presence of coercion. Both “public” and “private” system are by nature coercive and aim to strengthen capitalist power structures. All the while, the real issues with capitalist health care- the antiquated guild system for doctors, the high wages, the incompetence of hospitals and courts in dealing with malpractice issues, the costly state-by-state limitations on the supply of insurance, the drug industry and Intellectual Property laws, the State subsidies to agriculture, to name only these few- are blithely ignored because acknowledging them would require us to reject the very premises of our health care systems, which are hierarchy, inequality and coercion. There is absolutely no reason, apart from greed and power, why we can’t have “good and plenty” health care for everyone, whether it’s “private” or “public,” without years-long waiting lines or prices beyond what anyone can afford.
I don’t have any definitive definition of how one could evaluate the right to access, but here is what I think is a good starting point: if a person who makes the least amount of money possible (which in our case would be the minimum wage) can afford a basic version of whatever it is you’re examining without having to give up other basic necessities. In our current society, this is impossible: minimum wage can’t get you shelter, let alone any other necessity, which is why the State had to come up with subsidized housing in order to preserve its lower working class (and still, half of homeless people are employed). Therefore, as far as I can see, there can be no such thing as access to resources under a capitalist system.
Any social, economic or political issue can be examined from the standpoint of the ethical principles I’ve already listed.
Now, I know most people would reject such conceptual analysis because they would say that political issues are complex and require a careful examination of consequences. I am not going to address consequentialism in general, as it is very easily refuted. I do however want to address the pragmatist way of arguing that politicos adopt when we talk about such questions.
They’ll say that this ethical theory is all well and good, but that in reality, people are nasty and need to be controlled. That notions of consent or equality only apply to people who do not have evil intents, and that people with evil intents do not respect consent or equality. That we have to be “realistic” and admit that some power is necessary to keep people in line.
Actually, it’s true that people with evil intents do not respect consent or equality: we know that because they occupy seats of governments, major corporations, and international institutions. Beyond that fact, the belief that people in general have evil intents is absolutely irrelevant to the ethical perspective. Consent and equality would still be logical corollaries for our desire to fulfill our values, even if we were all evil. And if we are all evil, then all the more reason not to permit power to exist within our society, since power is what “evil people” need to impose their will on a whole society. Giving “evil people” the possibility of ruling others is much more destructive ethically than anything these “evil people” might be able to do individually. As individuals, they are Jeffrey Dahmers, sources of much suffering, but limited by their own personal capacities. As rulers, they are Hitlers and Stalins, bringers of virtually unlimited suffering.
If we look at society for what it is, we do observe sociopaths, hardened criminals, exploiters, and so on, but these people are not by far a majority in our society. They are perhaps on the order of 5%. Either way, the ethical deductions do not change, whether that percentage is 1% or 50%.
Just to be clear here, the issue is not protecting innocents, since any system can accomplish this goal. The issue is the kind of structure we deem necessary in order to accomplish that goal, and the kind of society we think it justifies. There are authoritarian political ideologies and egalitarian political ideologies. Each side is potentially able to solve social problems, but the uses of force of authoritarianism represent a very steep price to pay.
It is here where he jumps from largely reasonable and strong philosophical basic points to conclusions that aren't immediately logical or justified. He is bang on about immigration, it is a matter of freedom and the way we interfere that stops the progression of other countries and drives the need for the migration from poverty to our riches. It is also pure racism and fear that creates the issue of immigration, that and the fact that the west operates under an unsustainable system of government controlled social safety nets that creates legitimate economic concerns (legitimate but perhaps totally unjustified). The conclusions he jumps to is the one of the organisational changes needed to allow this to happen. I can think of 100 ways to change the world that don't require a world changing approach, simple changes to policy or rules that would create more equity. Whether or not that is possible without a world changing approach is indeed debatable as well.
Another important distinction in this post is the difference between preferences and universals. About victimless crime.
And finally I will ignore the capitalist part in terms of my comments since I disagree but don't want to frame the debate there. I would like to highlight the later part of the post though about the necessity for systems and the 'protection of innocents from evil' as that seems a particularly important argument.
What do you think?
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Originally Posted by elfdude
