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Some thoughts on this: You have no obligation to conform to these laws at all. You are not born into a contract. A contract is a piece of paper which you can u
by eckyptang 14y ago
Some thoughts on this:
You have no obligation to conform to these laws at all. You are not born into a contract. A contract is a piece of paper which you can use to wipe your bum with if you wish.
You can in theory do what the hell you like. People regularly do. You can kill people, not pay tax, walk over the border of any country and urinate anywhere you like.
The only downside is that someone who does subscribe to the rules will probably throw you in jail or kill you without respecting your choice.
Fear of the above is the only reason that the law works at all.
When the law becomes bad for the population, which it really is under many common ethical principles these days and it is getting worse, we need to have a revolution to reset the badness.
There is no happy solution to adding legislation other than resetting it completely occasionally.
Dying and emigrating just bring their own legal problems.
- digitalWestie 14y agoAbsolutely right - there is no formal contract. What is being reflected on here is really a 'social contract' - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract
- eckyptang 14y agoThere is no social contract either. It evaporates in a moment's notice when you break the speed limit or download an mp3.
- digitalWestie 14y agowhat do you mean by there being no social contract? When you break the law the state punishes you because you have broken 'social contract'.
- eckyptang 14y agoIt's all about trading the social contract against risk of punishment. It's so absolutely unenforceable that more people break the social contract than adhere to it.
- flyinRyan 14y agoBut if you think about it, doesn't this seem crazy? I mean, obviously I shouldn't kill people, but if I don't do the things the implicit contract expects me to, some crazy person will come up and put me in a cage. For example, if I happen to grow a plant that will grow on its own without my help, and happen to store a lot of these plants for the winter, I could get locked up by someone for being a drug dealer.
- eckyptang 14y agoIt's all crazy. Absolutely batshit crazy. People hide behind it all the time and defend it as well. In your example, it is why people buy the plants from someone else. It is purely risk mitigation. It allows them to break the implicit contract without risking severe punishment. The drug dealers are willing to take a larger risk as there is a high probability of financial gain or a higher risk of getting killed by their importer/pusher.
- lmm 14y agoAll crazy people think they're sane and everyone else are the crazy ones. If you can convince other people that you don't deserve to be locked up for growing these plants, then you won't be. All this talk of "implicit contracts" doesn't change that, it only overcomplicates everything.
- tallanvor 14y agoThe only thing keeping you from killing people is fear? I think moral values (no matter where they are derived from) keep people from committing more crimes.
- eckyptang 14y agoConsidering morality is founded on a fear of someone doing to you what you did to them, then yes. This is a fairly basic interpretation of the golden rule but it stands up to the majority of counterpoints.
- acuozzo 14y ago> Considering morality is founded on a fear of someone doing to you what you did to them, then yes. Well, at least we know you're at stage #1 of Kohlberg's stages of moral development.
- eckyptang 14y agoAh that broken model which assumes that moral reasoning has a relation to moral action, which it clearly doesn't for the majority of the population of this rock...
- acuozzo 14y agoCiting the broken assumption upon which the model is (partly) based isn't enough to claim the model has no value, as you're clearly implying. An example: A model of the universe is useful, even if it was developed under the assumption that it was created by supernatural forces. Please don't use such weak argument tactics in the future, as they're just childish.