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It's very easy for me to have a preferred moral code that is almost like yours except that I do not axiomatically declare that capital punishment is equivalent
by ajkjk 11y ago
It's very easy for me to have a preferred moral code that is almost like yours except that I do not axiomatically declare that capital punishment is equivalent to murder.
- the_ancient 11y agoWhy? Because it is "legal". Do you base your morality on what is legal and what is illegal? How do you define murder?
- function_seven 11y agoSincere question. Why are you allowed to murder someone in self-defense, but not as a punishment for crimes? What moral code do you rely on that draws the line there? Why is that moral code more correct than one that draws the line between punishment and capricious violence? FWIW, I'm somewhere between you and OP in my thoughts. Definitely against the death penalty in practice, and somewhat ambivalent in theory. But it's interesting to really think about the axioms we construct our morals and ethics from, and why they're the way they are.
- the_ancient 11y ago>>Why are you allowed to murder someone in self-defense, but not as a punishment for crimes? The principle of Self Ownership, which is the basis of the philosophy of liberty https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9srplWe_QQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9srplWe_QQ It would not be murder to protect your own life from the aggression of others. However any use of violence must be in proportion to the threat to your life. I.e I do not believe you have the right to kill someone for trespassing, but only in those circumstance where there is a reasonable believe your life to be direct and immediate danger.
- rwjwjuwjudf 11y agoIf capital punishment is murder, then taxation is theft.
- the_ancient 11y agoCorrect
- jakub_h 11y agoIs paying for services theft?
- rwjwjuwjudf 11y agoI dunno, I'm not a libertarian :)
- zo1 11y agoWhy don't you rephrase that with the appropriate level of detail and not leaving out important facts: Is not wanting to pay for something that you were given and didn't explicitly request theft? And yes, I'm an anarcho-capitalist and jumping in here. There are a slew of assumptions that are being made when arguing for a pro-state stance. Eventually, you'll stumble on this thing called the "social contract", and then magically all questions of validity are somehow answered. It's a convenient answer devoid of any first-principles, that many are content with using as a basis to defend the status-quo of the existence of a state.
- rwjwjuwjudf 11y agoThere's no such thing as no state. For any conflict, whoever wins is the de facto state.
- zo1 11y agoI think you'd get disagreements from both sides of the fence on that definition of a state.
- function_seven 11y agoGreat answer. Do you consider lifetime imprisonment to be immoral for the same reason?
- the_ancient 11y agoThat depends, in general yes. Generally I believe the only persons that should be in "prison" are those that are a clear danger to society Serial Killers for example. Not for punishment, but for the protection of society. I think the legal system should be less about punishment, and more about Restitution and Protection.
- zo1 11y agoSelf-ownership... Then you could theoretically "cede" that ownership of your own body to someone else like a family-member / spouse (perhaps a will, or have it done prior-to-death). And thus, in that frame of reference murder becomes an extreme form of theft.
- barrkel 11y agoGovernments are made by people out of people. The whole system is just people, telling one another what to do, with the carrot of reward and the rod of violence, as necessary. An organization isn't a shield against personal morality. Capital punishment is a bunch of people telling another person to kill yet another person. That's all it is. (And yes, war is murder too.)
- ajkjk 11y agoI agree with most of that, except for the "is" in "war is murder". What do you mean by "is"? At the end of the day we have decided as a society that "Killing people is called murder and it's Very Bad", and we can also decide that "killing people who don't deserve it is murder and it's Very Bad" if we prefer. Personally, I vacillate between thinking that capital punishment and life-imprisonment is quite immoral (and that we should fine something like 'exile' as an alternative), and a more utilitarian stance that, well, we have to find something to do with dangerous people and it doesn't really bother me if getting rid of them entirely is it. [n.b. these stances are all in a vacuum and do not reflect my policy beliefs, which are specifically attuned to our society's pisspoor implementation of life-imprisonment and capital punishment.]