meet our newest moderator

Wait, there was justification for Afghanistan? I might be confusing my conflicts, but didn't the nato basically arm what we call terrorist groups now to stop the russians from advancing on a position they never even wanted? Which was just an excuse to take down the new government who, while trying to bring education, equality and unity to the country was also kinda friendly to the russians?

Or was a new war started in afghanistan again? I always get confused

 

Not so much war with Afghanistan, but war in Afghanistan, as iirc that's where the terrorist group that attacked us was centered in.

NOT this one. I'm referring to this one.

 

My ideas will sound to socialist to share. But doesn't mean they wouldn't work . Its not necessarily a bad concept whatsoever if the idea is pure and not corrupt of course, but that has yet to happen.

 

Ha ha, np, my ideas are fairly socialist. Remember, not every member here is American, and it's mostly America that flips out. Most Euro nations already have some semblance of socialized programs.

 

In our country political parties can actually admit to being kinda socialist. It's kinda cool.

 

When compared to other political regimes, socialism is often presented as an economically managed but socially permissive ideology.

If I ask you to look at each of these features separately, you will see the advantages of them. But do you also see and appreciate their disadvantages?

 

the first one limits personal freedom, the second one allows people to be assheads. Or my English is off again. Or my social studies are off again.

 

Looking at the second factor first.

Socially permissive grants personal freedom, which has two facets: freedom from obligation, and freedom to choose.

Freedom from obligation means you have a society which has no solid foundation, and cannot guarantee to protect and provide for you. If nobody is obligated to grow your food, or school you, or provide you medicine/surgery when you are ill, then you can't be sure these will be adequately available. When there is freedom from obligation, there is risk that over time these institutions will fall victims of neglect. I often think that this form of freedom is synonymous with mismanagement. Freedom is the screw that works loose, or the belt that slips from its wheel. Things work when they are managed and maintained. Things eventually break and fall to pieces when they are not.


On the other hand, Freedom to choose. People desire this kind of freedom because they believe that being able to choose makes them happy. But this is a cognitive bias that is demonstrably false in psychological studies. People desire the happiness they anticipate from choosing, not so much a freedom to choose itself, even though there is no correlation between the two. So this kind of freedom doesn't have as much value as we like to believe it does.

So I propose an alternative: If we strengthen our sense of ethics, that is; socially, in commerce, and in industry, then people would feel reassured that they are free to be as happy as anyone else. Ethics protects people from deception and misfortune, and aims to improve how we affect one another's minds.

 

And strengthening ethics would work how exactly? Starting to teach ethics in school? You know there would be huge objections to anything like that, even with ethics that seem universal to you (for one, the guy in the opening post would be against teaching this ). And then we can't even effect the parents. Even full-scale propaganda probably wouldn't work(ask anyone who lived in east-germany)

 

Ethics isn't an explicit rulebook (When you see this happen, you must do this.) It is the principles of how we affect others' minds.

Ultima showed us these principles: Truth, Compassion, and Honor.

It is not usually difficult to examine yourself in your actions to measure how these virtues are being used.

Try it.

 

Aye, but these can often work against one another. Truth can hurt compassion. Sure that lady was the one who stole a box of oatmeal, but she only did it to help illegal immigrant.
And everyone has a different definition of honor. Some see it as honor to play as dirty as possible to show the opponent you respect him.

 

"Sure that lady was the one who stole a box of oatmeal, but she only did it to help illegal immigrant."

The act is not compassion, it is aiding and abetting a criminal. An illegal immigrant is a criminal. The lady is guilty of that as well as being guilty of theft.

An illegal immigrant is not respecting truth or honor by circumventing the immigration system. They are not behaving ethically, and they have that to answer for:

Revealing the truth of why they are here must proceed any compassion for them. The infrastructure which deals with them also needs to behave ethically.

 

change that into the abandoned kid of an illegal immigrant than.

 

So, the two are mutually exclusive? One or the other.

One is an ethical motivation, the other is a legal problem. I fail to see why it can't be both.

 

The kid is still present illegally, and we still cannot justify theft or aiding one who is evading the law. But this is more an issue of integrating new idea with existing laws.

And what happens when we do try to tie a new ethical system in with existing laws, is that we get incompatibility, because as all D&D players should know, Lawful and Good are not the same thing.


I would prefer if existing law was scrapped, and fresh laws were created derivative of this ethical system. Unlike existing legal pedantry, these fresh laws would have to be flexible, and appeal to the virtues for interpretation.

Most people know in their hearts what is ethical, because most people are aware how their actions affect other minds. Conventional law is what allows people to act in spite of ethics.

Proceeding on those lines, theft of oatmeal is not behaving with honor, and remains unethical. There should be an infrastructure to deal with the abandoned child. If Lady wants to help, then she needs to make child and said infrastructure meet one another.

 

I really don't think interpretable laws would work out. It'd be too easy for judges to be bribed and claim that their verdict was within boundaries of the law.


I would enjoy seeing all laws remade from scratch.

 

With any individual acting as sole judge, we can consider installing watchers to make sure that individual is not corrupt, but then who watches the watchers? This is why we prefer trial by jury.

Perhaps trial by a jury of ethical people -- people who have proven themselves to be of good character and who interpret the virtues well.

edit:
Also, in addition to what was said above about theft: Theft by definition is the taking of something you don't have any right to take... which is innately dishonorable -- independent of any laws.

Theft cannot be honourable, but we can change the status of what we do or don't have a right to take, so that taking it is no longer considered theft.

 

a jury of ethical people? That sounds to me like the government would be able to decide whose views count in court. That is an idea with very good intention, but could go down the drain awfully fast. edit: for an example, the guy in the opening post could hold a referendum, declaring commies to be unethical, with him determining the definition of a communist, resulting in a justice system in a jury consisting solely of very right-wing people

 

We have something not too dissimilar at the moment: juries of law abiding people. Anyone who has been prosecuted in the past is not allowed to be a juror. That summoning process is shrouded in a little mystery however. How does the government decide who to summons to jury duty?

The main difference really is that ethical jurors would be people who have no prosecutions under the new ethical system.

 

I still find it disconcerting that a government would decide what is ethic and what isn't. We currently have a politician in the Netherlands who finds anyone of muslim faith unethical. If he gets voted into a high enough position, would that mean muslims would not be able to become jurors?