4 ms·
I (mostly) find myself agreeing with you on this website, and I see what point you're making by referencing healthcare, but that's not at all relevant. To stee
by remarkEon 4y ago
I (mostly) find myself agreeing with you on this website, and I see what point you're making by referencing healthcare, but that's not at all relevant.
To steelman your argument, you're concerned about proliferation of, essentially, tomfoolery and pilferage amongst the young. Because of changing or weakening of cultural norms, or because of some other reason (maybe poverty or class divides or some such explanation). I mostly share these concerns, to be honest, because in the last 2 years I've started to see the apathy present in younger co-workers that have joined the company I'm at. The problem I have with your comparison is that ... no one wants to be like Saudi Arabia except the Saudis. Older iterations of Civilization had much more draconian enforcement of law because, and this is just my personal opinion based on my own reading of history, the stakes were a lot higher. Stealing someone's coin or robbing them of their livestock literally killed the victim (usually very slowly and very very miserably), and so, in a way that I understand, it made sense for the penalty for such a transgression to be as or nearly as extreme as the cost to the victim.
I'm not sure what purpose it would serve to bring that back, since the stakes are demonstrably not that high. I realize you're not arguing for that, and are making a broader point. I'm trying to think of constructive ways to explain to these kids that "stealing is bad", but then I just realize that the problem isn't the kids, it's the Professors and the University, and redirect my criticism toward those institutions instead.
- rayiner 4y agoI think that stealing and cheating—by people who don’t face acute need—is a profound moral defect. In the same way that people saying “boys will be boys” when applied to quite horrible conduct says something bad about our society, normalizing theft as youthful hijinks says something bad. (Not directed at you, I’m aware most Americans anymore just don’t think it’s that big of a deal.) You have a point about abundance changing the balance compared to earlier eras. I’ll have to think about that.
- remarkEon 4y agoI understand and sort of agree but this could spiral into some deontological debate. I don’t see “boys will be boys” as relevant because, well, boys will in fact be boys and do stupid stuff. You’re imo rightly pointing out that there’s a certain strain of moralism today that, mostly as a political project, excuses certain behavior - like theft. I don’t think the people you’re concerned about are actually saying “boys will be boys”, and far from it. They actually want these kinds of thefts to happen, and that’s not the same as “Johnny 16 year old crashed the car racing his friend”. My point about scarcity and material abundance isn’t that harsher penalties weren’t morally or philosophically justified. Just that it was much easier to do so when things were scarce.