Ethics: The Bottom Line in Human Affairs -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The bottom line in the organization of human affairs is not politics, but ethics, and the current ethical system of our time, embraced by almost all Western philosophy professors, is called utilitarianism. Utilitariansim is similar to Marxism in that it presupposes a powerful State to provide people with basic life essentials such as peace and harmony, justice and security, health care and affordable housing, jobs, and so on. A common, and accurate, criticism of utilitarians is that they all, like communists, espouse the view that the ends justify the means. For example, since one goal of the American State is to provide security for its people, the killing of innocent bystander Pakistanis by drone-fired missiles is justified since it is believed to further the goal (the end) of providing security for US citizens. Another example is that if State authorites believe that it will be of benefit to the State to inflate its currecy by printing an excess not backed by precious metals or by promises of repayment, (quantitative easement is one term for this), then this action is justified, even if some people's savings are reduced in value, since the goal is to help the State.

An ethical system directly opposed to utilitarian ethics is the ethics of the Golden Rule, apparently first proposed by Confucius as the ethics of reciprocity (Shu) around 500 BC. It has since been worded in several different ways by different people including Rabbi Hillel who proposed a negative version, "Do not unto others that which is hateful to you" some decades before Christ's positive version "Do unto others..." There are also newer versions, sometimes called the Platinum Rule, which state something to the effect of "Don't do to others what they don't want done to themselves," and all these versions are similar to what David Nolan, founder of the US Libertarian Party in 1971, proposed when he urged others to declare with him that "I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals."

Nolan's Libertarian Pledge, the age-old Golden Rule, and the newer versions of Platinum Rules have very minor differences between them that attempt to avoid semantic problems such as "Do unto others..." creates a problem for very rigid thinkers who see this rule inviting masochists to beat them because they want to be beaten or to tax them because they, themselves, want to be taxed, but the bottom line is that the Golden Rule glories in respect for the individual while utilitarianism glorifies the Supreme State.

M

Utilitarianism does not presuppose a state, rather, a state is often the conclusion reached when starting with utilitarian values. Some utilitarians believe the market to be a better mechanism than the state, however.



This is not true of all utilitarians. For example, rule utilitarians follow the guidelines that one should never perform an action that will generally bring unhappiness (such as murder), even if it might in a very specific circumstance. Virtue utilitarians attempt to build into their character values which will always promote more happiness than unhappiness (such as peacefulness). It would be a contradiction for these utilitarians to murder in order to cause peace, and they recognise this. Many many utilitarians don't think abut the end justifying the means at all - because it is obvious that there is no particular "end" (all things are "end points" in their own way). But some utilitarians follow this principle.



This shows that the people involved are not really utilitarians (rather, not really following utilitarian principles) if they place more emphasis on Americans than they do on citizens of other countries. Egalitarianism is a big part of utilitarianism, and does not prefer one set of people over another.

They (the American state) would probably be accused by many utilitarians of making rash decisions, firstly by assuming that killing people would promote more peace than war, and secondly because they did not try other options which would promote peace and happiness for more people involved (including Pakistanis). While murder might be a way to cause peace, it is not necessarily the way to cause peace that creates peace and happiness for the greatest number of people.



I am very interested in money. Maybe we should make a thread based solely around it. I imagine it would get quite big quite quickly!



I do not see this as a direct opposition. Both systems aim at peace and happiness, and both include the concept of the happiness of others in their formulation. An ethic focussed more on the individual would be an ethic that is in more direct opposition.



I think many, if not most, utilitarians would heartily agree with the statement of David Nolan.



One of the reasons why the law is written in fairly rigid terminology, and why scientific papers are written in very rigorous terminology, and why I appreciate well-defined terms, is because it removes personal bias from the interpretation of these terms. Why is this important? Firstly, it means that we can all understand each other. Secondly, it means that we know what exactly what we are talking about. Thirdly, it assists us in assessing liminal situations. When a new situation crops up that poses an ethical dilemma hither unseen, having well-defined terms means that we can assess the situation according to the true meaning and intention of the Golden Rule. Something that is not well-defined in some sort of language cannot be well communicated, and cannot be well applied to a large range of situations.



There are other, more individualistic ethics than the Golden Rule - one of the reasons many of these are more individualist is because they never make a statement that can be applied to a societal level. I know I am repeating myself, but utilitarianism does not glorify the Supreme State - though versions of it might, it would be incorrect to apply this thinking to the fundamentals of utilitarianism and better to apply it to the distinct varieties.

I assume that you disagree with the idea of a Supreme State, but if your objection is, as mentioned here, because they go to war with each other sometimes, well that happens with individuals as well (one person may murder another), and we certainly don't think people are a bad idea. This is not to say that I think the states that exist today are incredibly well run (nor do I think this of a majority of states in history), but I do not think that this invalidates the idea of the state.

To sum up:
(1) Communism is often given a bad name because of other political actions taken by famous leaders advocating communism. They, like many others, used the doctrine of communism to wield power, without being true to the idea of communism. This aside, I hope you are not conflating utilitarianism with communism, nor looking only at people who use utilitarianism to justify non-utilitarian acts.
(2) I would very much like to see a very specific form of the Golden Rule that you agree with, without having to call upon extra, non-expressible words or criteria. If you understand it, I feel sure that you can put it into language.
(3) I wonder about your objection to the state. I think it would be interesting to hear your specific objections. If they are better put forward in another thread, I understand.

Cheers

My objection to States is that IMHO they are authoritarian, unethical, and illogical by their very natures, beginning with taxation, as I've argued in earlier threads. I agree with the old libertarian saying that "The difference between taxation and theft is that a thief doesn't come back to run your life." States bully people into doing things they don't want to do, and prevent them from do things they want to do "for their own good", or for the good of "society as a whole" (the State). Think George "The Decider" Bush. Think Mubarek. Think "l'estat c'est moi."

Tom Palven wrote:
Another example is that if State authorities believe that it will be of benefit to the State to inflate its currecy by printing an excess not backed by precious metals or by promises of repayment, (quantitative easement is one term for this), then this action is justified, even if some people's savings are reduced in value, since the goal is to help the State.

mcfate replied
I am very interested in money. Maybe we should make a thread based solely around it. I imagine it would get quite big quite quickly!

I'm still slogging though Margaret Atwood's little (203 pages) book, Payback, dog-earing some pages, and making a few notes. It's about debt and its history. I'm on page 158 now and it's starting to get more relevant to today and more interesting to me. If you start a money thread I'll put comments about Payback there, or else I'll start a new thread for it, not that there's anything, at least so far, earthshattering about it.

My own "Golden Rule" might borrow from Nolan, and go something like "Do not inititiate force against peaceful people." "Peaceful people" gives some wiggle room for interventiion where someone is being robbed or otherwise being agressed against, but I'm sure this doesn't cover all bases, and doubt that any short "rule" could.

In fact, your rules does cover all bases, in that you could apply the rule in every circumstance. However, it might not provide the answer you would like (or believe to be correct) in every circumstance. This either means:
(a) there is a rule which covers every circumstance that you would agree with, but you do not know how to express it, or
(b) there is no such rule, and in some circumstances you use your own personal intuition or emotion



I can see an argument against tax here, as well as an argument against bad people in government, as well as governmental structures that are not conducive to ethical behaviour. But this doesn't mean that the idea of the state is bad, just that our current form of the state is bad, or at least has bad components.

Take tax, for example. Tax that is used for good things, such as welfare, disaster rebuilding, and so on, is not that unethical. Tax for military invasions of other countries is. The purpose of the tax, more so than the idea of tax, is the defining feature.

PS. You do not need to quote the entire previous post - just put the relevant bits between quote tags to save space and scrolling time.

mcfate said: Take tax, for example. Tax that is used for good things, such as welfare, disaster rebuilding, and so on, is not that unethical. Tax for military invasions of other countries is. The purpose of the tax, more so than the idea of tax, is the defining feature.

You example above is that of the purpose (the ends) justifying the means (theft). If it is a violation of individuals to use force against them- to beat, rape, steal from, or murder them, for example; and taking someone else's belongings by force is stealing, then taxation is a form of theft, even if Jesus, Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Hobbes said it's okay. IMVHO, doing good through theft, or killing people for the purpose of ethnic cleansing, or by "collateral damage", thought to benefit particular States, still constitutes theft and murder no matter what the politically correct terms are according to those doing the stealing and murdering.

Wtf are quote tags and how do you use them? I thought that one day it might dawn on me how one does that, but it hasn't happened.

Just highlight the bit of text you want to quote and copy it. In the text box where you post there is a quote button (next to bold, italics, underline) - pressing the button will put quote and /quote in []'s on the page. Paste the copied text in between the two sets of brackets. This will make the text appear as a quote (in blue, in its own box). If you want to attribute the quote to someone, makes the first box read quote="mcfate" (or whoever).

(PS. I haven't put the brackets in because I think that would hide the tags and make parts of my text into quotes)

The second thing to talk about is tax, and the purposes of tax.

Let's say we live in an economy constructed in a capitalistic way, with fractional reserve banking and interest. What does this mean? It means that money (or wealth) tends to accumulate around existing money. More specifically, money is only created in circumstances where (a) money already exists in a large amount, and (b) where it is predicted that more money will accumulate. The result of this is a system which sustains inequality.

One way of helping those in poverty is to give them money - charity. If there need is great enough, I see no reason not to take this as a moral obligation. This creates an obligation to be charitable. A tax that goes toward a good cause and does not place one in poverty is a type of enactment of charitable obligation. The only problem is, quite often the tax does not go to the right place.

Thank you. It seems that while replying I can also scroll down and highlight a portion of your post and then press quote and get the same result.

[quote="mcfate"]One way of helping those in poverty is to give them money - charity. If there need is great enough, I see no reason not to take this as a moral obligation. This creates an obligation to be charitable. A tax that goes toward a good cause and does not place one in poverty is a type of enactment of charitable obligation. quote]

IMHO voluntary charity is praiseworthy, but where does the obligation derive? If charity is obtained through coercion is it really charity? Isn't robbing Peter to give charity to Paul still robbery? And who gets to play Robin Hood? One thing that might impede charitible giving is the idea that "My tax dollars are taking care of that through food stamps and other charitible programs, already."

Edited to add that that quote system didn't work the second time, but at least I seem t be getting somewhere with it.

Both quote and /quote need to have brackets [] around them to be identified by the system as the beginning and the end of a quote.



Well, the obligation to help people in need. I suppose you may not see it as an obligation, just as many people would see jumping into a river to save someone as not an obligation. That's fine - but the idea that some things are moral obligations is something that I believe, and from this perspective tax is not always bad.



Well, help derived through obligation is still help. Is it charity? Dunno. Does it matter whether help is charity or help through obligation? No - as long as helping one person doesn't overly disadvantage the other.



This is a trickier one. First, I don't see that a moral obligation can be robbery. Secondly, a big part of the question is, Is it fair that some people have more than enough while others are suffering? So one of the real questions is, Should Peter have been able to earn such an amount in the first place? This is not to say the Peter should not earn reward for his work, but rather that there should perhaps be a better idea of what the upper limit of earning should be - at the moment it is theoretically unlimited, and laws are made, to a certain extent, with this in mind. If the upper limit was (I will make up a number randomly) half a million, or a hundred thousand, then the way that tax worked would be greatly different.



Well, everyone who pays tax. If you are asking, Who should decide how much tax people should pay, well, the current answer is an institution representing the people. Perhaps this could be modified for the better, but it is not a terribly bad answer.


Well yes, the need for charity would be somewhat mitigated by tax, so this is a valid remark.

___

PS. When trying to explain quote marks, I accidentally made a quote, so I have deleted that part.