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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 "g

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. ;)
- thegrimmest 4y ago

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. ;)

thegrimmest 4y ago