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I'd just like to add that I quite like your versioning of the US. I guess it's exactly version 3 that I take issue with. It seems to have abandoned principled l

I'd just like to add that I quite like your versioning of the US. I guess it's exactly version 3 that I take issue with. It seems to have abandoned principled lawmaking for an outcome-based approach. As a result it has produced a monstrous military-industrial-espionage complex that has taken actions with the widest gulf between moral posturing and moral consistency. We need a return to deontology. Laws should be made on principles. Anything can be construed to be for the "general welfare". A wide interpretation can (and has) been used to justify awful things.

shadowgovt 4y ago
American legislation has always been outcome-based. The Constitution itself included a "three fifths of all other Persons" compromise to get the document ratified by the Southern states in the first place. There was no principle that justified the ownership of other human beings in a country that ostensibly adopted fundamental rights, yet there we were. That worked until we fought a bloody war to change it, and then another compromise was reached. And that worked until the scale of the economy got to the point that if it wasn't operated in concert, it tore itself apart, and a new compromise was reached. And that worked until men who fought alongside men of other skin colors came back from the war and asked why they were good enough to bleed and die for this country, but not good enough to sit at a dining table next to someone they'd huddled in a foxhole with (while women asked why they were good enough to work the factories while the men were away but not when the men came back), and further new compromises were reached. It's always been compromises all the way down. Outcome-based law is the lifeblood of a democracy: the best outcome for the most people (with enough backstops against that pure-utilitarian approach to prevent, ideally, the creation of a permanent oppressed minority class).

shadowgovt 4y ago

American legislation has always been outcome-based. The Constitution itself included a "three fifths of all other Persons" compromise to get the document ratified by the Southern states in the first place. There was no principle that justified the ownership of other human beings in a country that ostensibly adopted fundamental rights, yet there we were. That worked until we fought a bloody war to change it, and then another compromise was reached. And that worked until the scale of the economy got to the point that if it wasn't operated in concert, it tore itself apart, and a new compromise was reached. And that worked until men who fought alongside men of other skin colors came back from the war and asked why they were good enough to bleed and die for this country, but not good enough to sit at a dining table next to someone they'd huddled in a foxhole with (while women asked why they were good enough to work the factories while the men were away but not when the men came back), and further new compromises were reached. It's always been compromises all the way down. Outcome-based law is the lifeblood of a democracy: the best outcome for the most people (with enough backstops against that pure-utilitarian approach to prevent, ideally, the creation of a permanent oppressed minority class).