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> you may not set your child on fire or starve them to death > the freedom to do everything which injures no one else You're always using examples that obviou

> you may not set your child on fire or starve them to death > the freedom to do everything which injures no one else You're always using examples that obviously injure other people. They're a bit nonsensical. > collective post-1930s society Yes exactly, we abandoned deontological liberty for utilitarian collectivism. We decided that outcomes were more important than principles. The whole nation was founded on the principle that individual liberty was the primary concern. Being forced to cooperate with someone else's version of "the good", whether that someone was elected or not, is morally unacceptable to many people. If we're pursuing utilitarianism, then we'll end up in the PRC. Lots of their policies are quite effective from an outcomes perspective. If you embrace collectivism, where and by what principle do you draw the line around individual autonomy? Is it just anything the majority agrees on goes? I keep asking you about moral justification and you respond with legal obligation. These are not the same thing. How do you determine if a law is moral or not? I've outlined some principles by which to do so, how do you do it? > in a fair society I guess we have different definitions of "fair" - would you care to provide your definition? This is kind of my point: different people have different definitions of "good" and "fair" and "just". Given there is no higher authority to appeal to, it's unreasonable to impose your definition on others. Your definition isn't inherently any more correct than mine. The only difference is your comfort in imposing.

shadowgovt 4y ago
> The whole nation was founded on the principle that individual liberty was the primary concern Did you know that immediately after the Revolutionary War ended, and among the reasons the Continental Army never actually disbanded (as was the original plan), it was used to put down a tax revolt among Pennsylvanians who weren't interested in paying the new alcohol tax? We have always forced people to cooperate with someone else's version of "the good." From their point of view, the distillers believed the federal government and PA state didn't have the right to levy that tax. They learned otherwise. Similarly, about a hundred years later, a whole half of the country would try to take their ball and go home on the entire constituted union. They learned otherwise. The coercion you imagine only came about in the '30s was always there; it's probably necessary to maintain the empire. We do, however, get a vote on what we're coerced into (and we did in the '30s also). The moral justification for collective organization of the country is the old do not die starving cold deaths, children don't go hungry, and we're all better off if some are forced to put more in the till than they would of their own volition (including, ultimately, them; the ultra-wealthy also drive on public roads and use public sewage, and their air is just as clean as their neighbor's because the EPA told them they had to put a scrubber on their factory's smokestack). Here's a secret about the US and the PRC... We and the PRC have the same goal. We're empires of over a hundred million souls and we instituted governments to provide for the common welfare. We have quite different ideas of how to get there, but ultimately? More similarity than difference and we basically always have, ever since we stole a country from a king. Anyone who tries to calve off a chunk of the country we stole to run as their own isolated compound (like our forefathers did) learns pretty quickly that their freedoms end not at the beginning of their neighbor's nose, but when the outflow from their pockets to the tax coffers dries up. It's always been that way, ever since Washington rode up in front of a hundred men to tell some whisky distillers what the score was now that the king was gone. As technology has evolved, it's become practically more possible to centralize the federation, and we've generally found that to be useful to improve the common welfare (everything from the interstate rail line network to EPA rules). > Given there is no higher authority to appeal to ... which is why I fall back to the law. It's the ultimate Chesterton's Fence... if someone wants to tear down, for example, the Department of Education, it's incumbent upon them to explain how our ancestors erred and how we improve the common welfare and strengthen the union by turning back the clock. Because we instituted the thing to solve a problem... Why does that problem not come back if we reverse the old decision? (Incidentally, if you want to argue the counter on things like this, that's my recommendation to you: talk about how modern society differs so much from the society of the '30s that such-and-such government function is no longer needed because it's redundant or irrelevant. You're trying to roll back a clock, to argue we misstepped... Roll the clock forward instead, explain how, for example, the Equal Rights Act is no longer necessary because the animosities of old were cured. Sadly, on this specific topic you will fail because the Proud Boys decided to show up and be the living, breathing, carb-eating counter-example. But that's the avenue of argumentation that has promise. Otherwise, you're forever fighting the question "The people in the past passed these laws for a reason... What dragon does the fence keep at bay, and why wouldn't it come back if we take the fence down?").
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  I appreciate your answer. It does seem to me however hopelessly nihilistic. Anything willed by the majority or solving enough of a problem to garner votes is "good". The inadequate vote to shackle the capable, dooming them to toil to provide everyone with "the good". Questions like "what does it mean to be free?" are not only unasked, but the mere thought of them provokes derision. A nation populated by the last men who have long abandoned any hope of self actualization. > We and the PRC have the same goal. I don't think we do. Or at least I don't think American versions 1 and 2 did. Versions 1 and 2 seemed to be much more interested in maintaining only peaceful coexistence, not forcing nationwide cooperation. Maintaining a standing army, let alone fighting world wars, was still controversial. Most Americans, for instance, saw it as none of their concern what happened in Europe. The dragon of concern here isn't one that the fence keeps at bay, but one it has created. The last century has shown us the failure of many large, collectivist multi-cultures. The model simply isn't sustainable. People are too different from each other, and too widely disagree on what is good. This increases the friction of every interaction compelled by collectivization. This friction creates rifts in society that only deepen over time, as all camps dig in their heels and fortify their echo chambers. Forcing people who axiomatically disagree closer together than they are comfortable with is dangerous aside from being immoral. Our ancestors erred because, as they centralized and federated, they did not foresee that the enormous power they were concentrating would be captured by the very interests they were trying to tame and promptly turned against them. Well, some of them did, but they were ignored. There are only two kinds of power: centralized and decentralized. Each model carries its own risk profile. The only meaningful choices lie on the continuum between the two models. > How do you determine if a law is moral or not? This is the question you've been avoiding.
  - shrimp_emoji 4y ago
    >The inadequate vote to shackle the capable, dooming them to toil to provide everyone with "the good". My mans wants to pack up and move to Rapture[0] 0: https://youtu.be/J47ENHSomc8 https://youtu.be/J47ENHSomc8
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    > It does seem to me however hopelessly nihilistic. Anything willed by the majority or solving enough of a problem to garner votes is "good". I see what you mean. FWIW, I think there is good and evil, but the disagreements between individuals on which is which are so broad that in the public sector (especially for a country of hundreds of millions of folks), all we have to really fall back on is agreed-upon law as common consensus. Every person should vote their conscience, but when you ask "What is the conscience of the country," well, I have a giant legal code (of a federal level and fifty state levels) and not much else to point to that's actually shared. America is a nation of ideas, but what ideas? Kind of... All of them at the same time. To that end, I think you carry a notion that's pretty solid to keeping that nation working: with so many competing ideas overlapping, we get more stability when people enjoy the freedom to be left alone. > The last century has shown us the failure of many large, collectivist multi-cultures. I think there's wisdom in that (for the second half of the twentieth century); the challenges to multiculturalism have proven larger than the idealists assumed (many believed people would set aside their feelings, and people just don't do that; rather, many if not most of us are feelings-driven, with reason being a neat post-hoc trick we use to rationalize why we did a thing, not plan what we will do). But the previous half showed us the failure of many small, interdependent-but-separate territorial nations. We fought two world wars over that model (which is, of course, where the US also learned that sitting on our island just wasn't good enough, because if we didn't go join the fight, someone would cheerfully bring the fight to us when it got big enough. Being left alone wasn't an option; the world comes and finds you, and the historical "two big oceans" defense the US enjoyed is moot in an era of planes and ICBMs). Whatever we do with the fences, the world is smaller now than it was when most of them were put up. And doing nothing tends to just let the problems grow until they can't be ignored because they're physically bombing our land (which happened after 1941 as well). > How do you determine if a law is moral or not? This is the question you've been avoiding. You're right, because I don't think it's constructive between the two of us. We've communicated enough that I understand you don't have a framework to consider racism intrinsically evil, so discussing morality with you is in my "nope" bin. If living in this country itself hasn't convinced you of it, a rando commenter on HN sure ain't gonna. ;)

shadowgovt 4y ago

> The whole nation was founded on the principle that individual liberty was the primary concern Did you know that immediately after the Revolutionary War ended, and among the reasons the Continental Army never actually disbanded (as was the original plan), it was used to put down a tax revolt among Pennsylvanians who weren't interested in paying the new alcohol tax? We have always forced people to cooperate with someone else's version of "the good." From their point of view, the distillers believed the federal government and PA state didn't have the right to levy that tax. They learned otherwise. Similarly, about a hundred years later, a whole half of the country would try to take their ball and go home on the entire constituted union. They learned otherwise. The coercion you imagine only came about in the '30s was always there; it's probably necessary to maintain the empire. We do, however, get a vote on what we're coerced into (and we did in the '30s also). The moral justification for collective organization of the country is the old do not die starving cold deaths, children don't go hungry, and we're all better off if some are forced to put more in the till than they would of their own volition (including, ultimately, them; the ultra-wealthy also drive on public roads and use public sewage, and their air is just as clean as their neighbor's because the EPA told them they had to put a scrubber on their factory's smokestack). Here's a secret about the US and the PRC... We and the PRC have the same goal. We're empires of over a hundred million souls and we instituted governments to provide for the common welfare. We have quite different ideas of how to get there, but ultimately? More similarity than difference and we basically always have, ever since we stole a country from a king. Anyone who tries to calve off a chunk of the country we stole to run as their own isolated compound (like our forefathers did) learns pretty quickly that their freedoms end not at the beginning of their neighbor's nose, but when the outflow from their pockets to the tax coffers dries up. It's always been that way, ever since Washington rode up in front of a hundred men to tell some whisky distillers what the score was now that the king was gone. As technology has evolved, it's become practically more possible to centralize the federation, and we've generally found that to be useful to improve the common welfare (everything from the interstate rail line network to EPA rules). > Given there is no higher authority to appeal to ... which is why I fall back to the law. It's the ultimate Chesterton's Fence... if someone wants to tear down, for example, the Department of Education, it's incumbent upon them to explain how our ancestors erred and how we improve the common welfare and strengthen the union by turning back the clock. Because we instituted the thing to solve a problem... Why does that problem not come back if we reverse the old decision? (Incidentally, if you want to argue the counter on things like this, that's my recommendation to you: talk about how modern society differs so much from the society of the '30s that such-and-such government function is no longer needed because it's redundant or irrelevant. You're trying to roll back a clock, to argue we misstepped... Roll the clock forward instead, explain how, for example, the Equal Rights Act is no longer necessary because the animosities of old were cured. Sadly, on this specific topic you will fail because the Proud Boys decided to show up and be the living, breathing, carb-eating counter-example. But that's the avenue of argumentation that has promise. Otherwise, you're forever fighting the question "The people in the past passed these laws for a reason... What dragon does the fence keep at bay, and why wouldn't it come back if we take the fence down?").

thegrimmest 4y ago
I appreciate your answer. It does seem to me however hopelessly nihilistic. Anything willed by the majority or solving enough of a problem to garner votes is "good". The inadequate vote to shackle the capable, dooming them to toil to provide everyone with "the good". Questions like "what does it mean to be free?" are not only unasked, but the mere thought of them provokes derision. A nation populated by the last men who have long abandoned any hope of self actualization. > We and the PRC have the same goal. I don't think we do. Or at least I don't think American versions 1 and 2 did. Versions 1 and 2 seemed to be much more interested in maintaining only peaceful coexistence, not forcing nationwide cooperation. Maintaining a standing army, let alone fighting world wars, was still controversial. Most Americans, for instance, saw it as none of their concern what happened in Europe. The dragon of concern here isn't one that the fence keeps at bay, but one it has created. The last century has shown us the failure of many large, collectivist multi-cultures. The model simply isn't sustainable. People are too different from each other, and too widely disagree on what is good. This increases the friction of every interaction compelled by collectivization. This friction creates rifts in society that only deepen over time, as all camps dig in their heels and fortify their echo chambers. Forcing people who axiomatically disagree closer together than they are comfortable with is dangerous aside from being immoral. Our ancestors erred because, as they centralized and federated, they did not foresee that the enormous power they were concentrating would be captured by the very interests they were trying to tame and promptly turned against them. Well, some of them did, but they were ignored. There are only two kinds of power: centralized and decentralized. Each model carries its own risk profile. The only meaningful choices lie on the continuum between the two models. > How do you determine if a law is moral or not? This is the question you've been avoiding.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  >The inadequate vote to shackle the capable, dooming them to toil to provide everyone with "the good". My mans wants to pack up and move to Rapture[0] 0: https://youtu.be/J47ENHSomc8 https://youtu.be/J47ENHSomc8
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  > It does seem to me however hopelessly nihilistic. Anything willed by the majority or solving enough of a problem to garner votes is "good". I see what you mean. FWIW, I think there is good and evil, but the disagreements between individuals on which is which are so broad that in the public sector (especially for a country of hundreds of millions of folks), all we have to really fall back on is agreed-upon law as common consensus. Every person should vote their conscience, but when you ask "What is the conscience of the country," well, I have a giant legal code (of a federal level and fifty state levels) and not much else to point to that's actually shared. America is a nation of ideas, but what ideas? Kind of... All of them at the same time. To that end, I think you carry a notion that's pretty solid to keeping that nation working: with so many competing ideas overlapping, we get more stability when people enjoy the freedom to be left alone. > The last century has shown us the failure of many large, collectivist multi-cultures. I think there's wisdom in that (for the second half of the twentieth century); the challenges to multiculturalism have proven larger than the idealists assumed (many believed people would set aside their feelings, and people just don't do that; rather, many if not most of us are feelings-driven, with reason being a neat post-hoc trick we use to rationalize why we did a thing, not plan what we will do). But the previous half showed us the failure of many small, interdependent-but-separate territorial nations. We fought two world wars over that model (which is, of course, where the US also learned that sitting on our island just wasn't good enough, because if we didn't go join the fight, someone would cheerfully bring the fight to us when it got big enough. Being left alone wasn't an option; the world comes and finds you, and the historical "two big oceans" defense the US enjoyed is moot in an era of planes and ICBMs). Whatever we do with the fences, the world is smaller now than it was when most of them were put up. And doing nothing tends to just let the problems grow until they can't be ignored because they're physically bombing our land (which happened after 1941 as well). > How do you determine if a law is moral or not? This is the question you've been avoiding. You're right, because I don't think it's constructive between the two of us. We've communicated enough that I understand you don't have a framework to consider racism intrinsically evil, so discussing morality with you is in my "nope" bin. If living in this country itself hasn't convinced you of it, a rando commenter on HN sure ain't gonna. ;)