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Author | Topic: Moral Relativism | |||||||||||||||||||||||
contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Ah, I see, that makes ALL the difference. As long as you do it in cold blood, it's just killing, and thats not wrong.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Your words, 'Dawg, and I will hold you to them. This message has been edited by contracycle, 08-05-2004 10:02 AM
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: What if I steal it from a rich person who has more bread than they can physically eat? See, the notional preservation of property rights based on the potential impact suffered by the victim of theft is not invalid, but there is a valid question IMO as to whether it should be applied as a universal principle.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Exactly so. That illustrates my point: the NOMINAL impact which someonbe MIGHT suffer is taken as an absolute, and applied even in circumstances in which no impact will be felt.
quote: Absolutely so. I don't dispute that an individual can lay to the exploitation of some necessary good or resource. My concern arises when someone has socially endowed property rights far beyond what they can actually personally exploit. Under those conditions, a property system that protects such property only serves to make others dependant on that person. A better system would not extend property rights to things an individual is not or is not capable of exploiting, and leave everything else free to be exploited by others. IMO our property system is a hindrance to innovation and welath creation.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: I didn't at any point introduce subjectivity into the argument. I don't particularly give a shit about personal feelings in this regard becuase, this is a social system and everyone has feelings; no one persons can be prvileged. Capitalism makes value subjective; I think this is a faulty analysis. The criteria I apply is exploitation, and the capacity to exploit.
quote: Exactly so. Property rights are social structures; property does not carry an inherent moral quality. Which is exactly why it is NOT evident that theft is morally wrong. The moral wrongness of theft is a device our society uses to persuade people not to steal.
quote: IMO, yes. Not least because the gap between riuch and poor is expanding in most OECD states, and so this strategy is clearly failing.
quote: No. I am saying that a field is not possessed by a person merely because they put a stake in it. Either the field is under the plow, in use, and the person working it is befitting from it, or it is not in use, and should be freely available for use by those who need it and are willing to work. I assert actual exploitation crtiteria are more sensible than abstract property criteria for allocating social resources to users. And yes, this is very much Communism, as long as you don;t stoop to cheap lies like "everything is owned by the coercive state".
quote: This is an elderly and gross lie. Anyone who had read Capital would know how to answer this; it circulates in the West only as propaganda. The reason is, because I can gain benefit from a shitload of stuff. A house, a TV, a video player... and as technology improves, I stand to benefit even more. I am using all of this stuff, and therefore have the right to claim it be socially protected. What I do NOT have the right to do is say that someone else cannot use a resource to meet their own needs, and that it should be socially protected on my behalf, if I am not using it. That is the situation as it applies in capitalism, and it is in fact in capitalism that there is no motivation to work beyond the miniumum: the things I create through my efforts are owned by the boss, not by me, so there is no incentive for me to do more than the minimum.
quote: Charity. But in an induatrialised society, we can easily feed and house everyone, so the issue is largely moot. Modern property owning socities treat their disabled and elderly much worse than most primitive communisms.
quote: Its the old concept of the commons. Many "primitive" societies have for example grazing ranges over which everyone holds right of exploitation, but no-one holds right of exclusive exploitation. The result is that the grazing lands serve as a resource to the whole community with which individuals can achieve wealth through their own efforts, skill, and luck. But everyone also recognises that your cows are your cows. A person caring for a herd of cows has the exclusive exploitation rights to that herd because it has been brought about through their efforts; but they they do not have exclusiove property rights over the grazing lands because the land does not exist as a result of that persons efforts.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
quote: Absolutely true. And that is where a moral criticism is levelled at property-owning societies: wealth begets wealth, and the wealthy are a ruling, self-perpetuating class. Thus for example you later say:
quote: While this is notionally true, if the existing wealthy class has both the resources and the knowledge to best succeed, then their success is going to drive out the start-up companies; its more likely that a start-up will enter debt straight away and less likely to be able to procure good deals through contacts or nous. Some 70% of start-ups fail in the first year.
quote: The communist formulation is "the means of production". That is, the resources we exploit and the tools we use to exploit them. Its a distinction between the tools by which we produce the things we use, and the things we use themselves. If a common resource is being exploited at capacity, AND this causes some sort of conflict among would-be exploiters, a committee could be established to arbitrate, by one of several established democratic mechanisms.
quote: Yes. Capital explicitly shows how people of different abilities get to control differeing quantitites of wealth in its demonstration of the labour theory of value.
quote: In a sense, yes, but we are talking of a social contract relationship so distinct from orthodox property rights that its worth making a terminological distinction. One formulation that is used is to distinguish between personal property and private property. This also shows why the assertion that if I am a communist I should give my house and goods over to whoever demands it is also a misrepresentative lie. Communism does allocate to me the right to exclusive use of these assets.
quote: No; that is exactly the consequence of private property, and results in the steady elimination of communal property. For example originally in Rome the Ager Publicus was free grazing ground, but was steadily appropriated by private owners and major landholders. So here is the relevant question for your house: how many beds can you sleep in at one time? How many toilets can you use at one time? Exploitation limits your right to socially enforced exlusive access; it does not limit the wasteful expenditure of your own wealth surplus to your survival requirements. It is highly unlikely that anyone else will NEED to make use of your second bed or second toilet and demand these from you, but equally you have little personal NEED for a 200-room mansion.
quote: Assuming that through your efforts you had generated such a quantity of social value equivalent to the production costs of all those TV's, yes you could.
quote: Stuff you can have; what you cannot do is limit access to the means of production. The kind of problem this model attemopts to solve is this: a factory producing widgets falls below the ROI the owner would like or considers worthwhile; therefore they close the plant and throws the workers out on their ear. That facility could still have been productive, and the workers may still have been able to do socially valuable work; even if the ROI was nominal they might have remained self-sufficient.
quote: This only demonstrates that it is not my own ability which brings me my wealth, but my ability to persuade other people, who control wealth, to give me some. Its not much different from feadalism, is it? Capital is actually a late medieval analysis. The worker is a vassal dependant on the lords good will (and arguably wage workers have fewer rights than feudal serfs). Therein lies the second moral criticism of property-owning societies: not only does wealth beget wealth and the ruling class sustain itself, but tyhat very factor makes the rest of society dependant on the whim and will of these large owners. Property owning societies are inherently unfree.
quote: Well, I dislike yu reference to "state" to indicate "collective action by the people", but your formulation is essentially correct. The state however is a particulatr entity with particular fetaures - such as standing armed bodies anf the monopoly of violence - that are not necessary in non-properties societies.
quote: Too bad, I'm afraid. People often accuse communism of being feelgood hippy shit, but it aint. The two key concepts are: "From each according to their ability to each according to their need" and "He who does not work does not eat." But again, this is a theory being advanced specifically for an INDUSTRIAL society that finds it trivially easy to over-produce foodstuffs. It is, in other words, well within our ability to feed those that need food, and we can freely do so without jeopardising our own sustenance. FUNDS are not the issue because funds only indicate the ability to mobilise socially-held resources.
quote: In principle, yes it is OK, but equally it will be OK if I punch you in the nose when you bring it back. Its a matter between you and me, not the armed might of the state. I would have the right to ask why you made a point of using my vehicle rather than some other vehicle. OTOH, if you were rushing your pregnant wife to hospital and speed was of the essence, your decision would be more sensible and I would be less likely to find it offensive.
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contracycle Inactive Member |
Right, it was a reply to Sleeping Dragon's post 263. Dunno what happened there, I composed offline.
This message has been edited by contracycle, 08-20-2004 10:38 AM
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