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Your argument is (in my opinion) naively individualistic. You argue that someone's actions should not create any obligations for support. But that denies the i

by robbiep 11y ago

Your argument is (in my opinion) naively individualistic. You argue that someone's actions should not create any obligations for support. But that denies the interconnected nature of society. If someone gets injured and is unable to work, and has the misfortune of living in the United States (as opposed to Canada or Australia) then he cost of fixing them may be unbearable, meaning that a potential useful human life has now been subjected to the sidelines, rendering them unable to contribute to society. Thus we have a responsibility to provide safety nets to restore them to health and a functional member of society. In the same way, addiction and substance abuse damage otherwise useful members of society. Not everyone will fall so far from the tree, but we have a responsibility to provide the institutions necessary to try and get them back on track. When you're talking about illegal drugs, the best way to do this would be through funnelling taxation revenue from sale of previously illegal drugs into rehab and outreach programs (as with THC sales in the Netherlands, where 99% of hard drug users are linked in with social services).

mindcrime 11y ago
Thus we have a responsibility to provide safety nets to restore them to health and a functional member of society. It may turn out to just be quibbling over the meaning of "responsibility", but I don't see how that follows. I can see saying that it would be beneficial / nice / good / useful /etc. to "provide safety nets to restore them to health and a functional member of society". But saying "responsiblity" - to me - suggests a degree of obligation that I don't accept.
jpt4 11y ago
> a potential useful human life has now been subjected to the sidelines, rendering them unable to contribute to society. Thus we have a responsibility to provide safety nets to restore them to health and a functional member of society. This implies a commonly held value structure that prioritizes fuller utilization of human resources. Beyond the in-thread demonstrated non-universality of this particular metric, which raises the question of how and whether to apportion responsibility among ideological dissenters (by force? by opt-out choice? by opt-in choice? casuistic contract negotiations? (only the first scales with low implementation overhead)), "responsibility" does not exist in a vacuum. If one is responsible for something else, one is obligated to affect it. If one is to act to modify with legitimacy, one must have legitimate authority over the modified. Therefore, responsibility for the welfare of others implies authority over the status of others. Mutual responsibility thus creates mutual authority, which is a breeding ground for collisions of contrasting decisions, and thus conflict. Because effective decision-making systems nigh by definition reduce the possibility of conflict, executors of explicitly overlapping authority generally must be trained in the harmonious interaction of their jurisdictions. It is difficult to train nation-state scale populations, thus particularly in harmonious jurisdiction overlap. The rules for interaction must then be so simple as to be (or become) obvious and heuristic. What simple rules do you propose to effectively avoid mass conflicts of authority between humans with the full distribution of domain competencies displayed in a nation-state population, e.g. that of the United States of America?

by robbiep 11y ago

mindcrime 11y ago

Thus we have a responsibility to provide safety nets to restore them to health and a functional member of society. It may turn out to just be quibbling over the meaning of "responsibility", but I don't see how that follows. I can see saying that it would be beneficial / nice / good / useful /etc. to "provide safety nets to restore them to health and a functional member of society". But saying "responsiblity" - to me - suggests a degree of obligation that I don't accept.

jpt4 11y ago

> a potential useful human life has now been subjected to the sidelines, rendering them unable to contribute to society. Thus we have a responsibility to provide safety nets to restore them to health and a functional member of society. This implies a commonly held value structure that prioritizes fuller utilization of human resources. Beyond the in-thread demonstrated non-universality of this particular metric, which raises the question of how and whether to apportion responsibility among ideological dissenters (by force? by opt-out choice? by opt-in choice? casuistic contract negotiations? (only the first scales with low implementation overhead)), "responsibility" does not exist in a vacuum. If one is responsible for something else, one is obligated to affect it. If one is to act to modify with legitimacy, one must have legitimate authority over the modified. Therefore, responsibility for the welfare of others implies authority over the status of others. Mutual responsibility thus creates mutual authority, which is a breeding ground for collisions of contrasting decisions, and thus conflict. Because effective decision-making systems nigh by definition reduce the possibility of conflict, executors of explicitly overlapping authority generally must be trained in the harmonious interaction of their jurisdictions. It is difficult to train nation-state scale populations, thus particularly in harmonious jurisdiction overlap. The rules for interaction must then be so simple as to be (or become) obvious and heuristic. What simple rules do you propose to effectively avoid mass conflicts of authority between humans with the full distribution of domain competencies displayed in a nation-state population, e.g. that of the United States of America?