What a wonderful evocative word that is, freedom.So many times it has been used without any recall to the consequences ones freedom has upon another's freedom.
How could one disagree with that word and call yourself an American?Well i expect a few thousand native Americans and the descendants of slaves might just question that long held revered notion.This magic word was being banded around when black men where enslaved and native americans where still loosing their land.
One mans freedom to extort, manipulate,rob,exploit is another mans chains.Freedom has rules and to use the word as if it lifts your opinion above others is political propaganda of the lowest kind.
Everything you've just stated amounts to the reason why I believe we should discard the monetary system for a resource based economic system that equally distributes goods and services. From what you've just stated, you seem to have an apathetic and egoistic attitude towards economic inequality and poverty. Your answer is to embrace the intrinsic immorality of the system if it makes your life better.
hue-man responding to EmperorNero:
Yes, allowing people to make their own decisions and not being legally obligated to surrender a part of the fruits of your labor to people you don't know is intrisically immoral. :sarcastic: First, that's according to your morality only. Second, in a socialist system, someone like yourself who believes in 'equality' will be imposing his morality on the rest of us with the brute force of the police. How tolerant and kindly...
You're really misreading me man. I never said that I was a socialist, and in fact, I even stated that I was against socialism and capitalism. I'm against any economic system that is underpinned by a monetary system.
My morality is universal, not relative. You sound like a relativist, and please believe me when I tell you that relativism is dead. It has been discredited rather easily in academia.
I'm sorry, I thought you were advocating socialism. Disregard what I said.
However, I would love for you to show me how relativism can be discredited. If you mean that in academic circles relativism is no longer fashionable, I find that suprising, but in no way impossible. However, if you are saying that the concept itself has been or can be shown to be false, then I have to laugh. Relativism proves its own validty with nothing more than the word 'why,' followed by a question mark.
e.g.
Bob: "Slapping homeless people is wrong."
Rob: "Why?"
Bob: "Because slapping homeless people hurts them, and hurting people is wrong."
Rob: "Why?"
....
The justification for every positive statement (X is so and so) rests on another positive statement, which rests on another, and so on ad infinitum. In other words, it is impossible to prove any statement absolutel: i.e. without given or accepted premises. That is the claim of relativism, that there is no absolute truth, but rather different, equally justifiable (in that they cannot be fully justified) perspectives.
This is another misconception of what relativism is. Almost everyone on this site that has mentioned relativism seems to not fully understand or know what the concept entails and why it fails. Firstly, I believe that moral sentences do not state propositions (truths or falsehoods) because values are subjective, meaning that they are mind-dependent. We can only state things to be true or false if they are objective (mind-independent) and verifiable.
Relativism does not merely say that there are no absolute moral truths. Relativism says that what is moral depends merely on social customs, culture, or personal preference, and that no morals are universal.
Such a statement is due to the failure to realize the universality of the human condition.
The reason why relativism fails is because it does not propose a real meta-ethical theory.
It's been discredited in academia because 1. relativism fails to realize that there are moral standards that are universally applicable to all people regardless of culture, society, or personal preference, and
2. relativism is an error theory at best and nihilism at worst. Moral sentences can only be justified if you care about or value morality to begin with. If you don't value morality merely because it does not have any basis in the natural world or objective reality, then you are mistaking the answer to an important insight (whether morality is objective or subjective) to be the last word.
In an attempt to understand this resource economics stuff, lets try from the bottom.
So we declare capitalism immoral and abolish it. What do we do now?
We have to figure out some way to get food, but nobody produces anything.
So-called objective reality is also 'mind-dependent', but that's another issue: no need to go into that now.
That is exactly what is meant by the phrase 'there are no absolute moral truths.' Obviously there is a thing called morality; it fills many books and is the subject of many conversations. The issue is whether there is anything in morality more than personal and societal preference, habit, etc. Anything absolute, transcendent: i.e. not subjective. Relativism suggests that there is not, or in any case, if there is, no one can identify it.
There is not a universal human condition; there are as many various human conditions as there are humans, and as many cultural norms as there are cultures. In any case, if you want to abstractualize societal morality and identify certain common values or standards, that still in no way contradicts relativism. That all members of a certain species harbor certain tendencies, preferences, values, etc. (which is a dubious proposition, what you might call a universal moral value or standard is really nothing but a majority view, as there are always exceptions) does not demonstrate that there are absolute and objectively verifiable moral values or standards. The issue is not what number of people believe that 'one should never engage in X,' but rather whether or not in fact 'one should never engage in X.' As pure description you might state the fact that all human cultures have X value, but that does not prove that X value is 'correct.'
Relativism does not propose a meta-ethical theory because to propose one, as solution to the question of whether or not X value is 'correct', misses the point. On what does the meta-ethical theory stand? A meta-meta ethical theory, and so on ad infinitum? Relativism does not engage in that infinite logical regression because it is in fact the criticism of the idea that at some point in said regression, 'the' answer is found, which stands alone a priori without preceding premises. Show me one statement, moral or otherwise, which can stand alone and be indubitably correct without justification and I will abandon relativism immediately.
That there are certain moral standards which are universally accepted by all people (which for the sake of argument I'll suppose is true) does not prove that those standards are correct; it proves only that they are accepted. Anything in the subjunctive, any 'should' or 'thou shalt' is instantly defeated the moment the person being told that he 'should' asks why. That no one asks why and accepts the standard as self-evidently true does not mean that it is true that 'I should do this or that.' an absolute 'should' is meaningless. There is only 'he should in order to...': what the goal is depends on the perspective in question.
I don't know what you mean by 'error theory.' I'll guess and assume that you mean that relativism does not put forth a proposal, but is rather a criticism of all proposals as such. If that's what you mean, I agree. And? As for nihilism, that's a word now used in a negative sense, but, in my opinion, nihilism is the only rational conclusion to rational thought, afterwhich opens up the other possibilities, like the beautiful Nietzschean state of being suggested by my name, bright noon. I'll end by saying that everything is subjective; i.e. everything of which one is aware (which is everything, as far as we know) exists as experience from one perspective among many. There is no way to verfiy whether anything of which we are aware exists independently of our awareness of it; in the same way, there is no way to determine, or reason to believe, that there is anything in moral values which transcends human reality: i.e. anything other than a custom in the world.
In an attempt to understand this resource economics stuff, lets try from the bottom.
So we declare capitalism immoral and abolish it. What do we do now?
We have to figure out some way to get food, but nobody produces anything.
Relativism supposes that a statement such as 'one should not steal' is neither absolutely true nor absolutely false. For those who believe it to be true, it is true, and vice versa. This is my view. The contrary view is that such a statement is either absolutely true or absolutely false (i.e. true or false independent of our belief in whether or not it is true or false). You are saying that a moral dictate is not objectively true or false, but it is objectively right or wrong. What does that mean? If you mean that such a moral dictate is in accord with some other, higher moral code (such as a U.N. document), then I agree as a matter of fact. But that says nothing about and has nothing to do with the actual validity or not of the dictate. I am saying only this; morality is a word referring to beliefs and practices of humans on earth; there is nothing transcendent of that reality or absolute contained in moral tenets. So, if you can identify certain broad moral values in all cultures and all people, I'll agree you that there are universal morals as a matter of fact. That is no way means that they are valid or appropriate. They are just the habit of a species of primate on a planet.
In an attempt to understand this resource economics stuff, lets try from the bottom.
So we declare capitalism immoral and abolish it. What do we do now?
We have to figure out some way to get food, but nobody produces anything.
I don't believe that any moral sentences are true or false, because they are not objective statements.
I just don't agree that morality is relative to individual or societal preferences or standards.
I'm saying that the rightness or wrongness of certain moral standards, like those in the U.N. universal declaration of human rights, are universally applicable, and that's regardless of whether or not an agent chooses to abide by them.
The universality of moral precepts is dependent upon the good or bad consequences for all relevantly similar agents (persons).
The U.N. universal declaration of human rights is based upon the natural intentions of a personal organism to possess freedom, autonomy, and equality.
I'm advocating the abolishment of the monetary system, the collective ownership of the means of production, and equal distribution of goods and services. Most of the farming industry and manufacturing industry is automated. The only thing that's left is the service industry, and that's slowly being automated as well. I'm advocating an automated economic system. People would still have careers and professions that they can freely choose.
So that this is clear, I'm not advocating authoritarianism; I'm advocating libertarianism and egalitarianism.
The monetary system is a valuable service.
I really don't understand why people disagree with it so vehemently.
If the validity of any given value is not determined by those employing it in the context in which it was created, then by whom is it determined? Morality is relative from various perspectives precisely because there is no objective, absolute standard by which it can be evaluated. To deny that morality is relative to the culture in question is to imply that there is one, objective standard by which all the various, discordant moralities can be judged.
Ahh, here is the problem in your logic friend. Good and bad consequences for whom? What I consider good might be what you consider bad, or vice versa. All morality attempts to facilitate 'good.' Disagreement over what is 'good' is precisely the reason that there are many, various moralities.
That is no doubt what the people that made it thought. Now, lets say that I do not have these 'natual intentions.' Let's suppose that I like to be treated like a servant and to be ordered around. There are such people, the S in S&M for example. What exactly are you saying about them? Are you saying that the values in the U.N. declaration do apply to them, in that they hold those values? If so, that is simply false. Or, are you saying that those values should apply to them? If so, you are making a subjective judgement.
If you could show me that your ideas would not just lead to authoritarianism in actualization,
I would, except for a few details, be full scale on board with your ideas.
It's like blaming fires on the existence of woods. People see: 'There is a fire, it's in a wood, so if we get rid of woods there would be no more fire'.
Let me ask you a question -- how do you think we avoid authoritarianism in our current political system?
Well if you get rid of the woods, you will get rid of the fires in the woods; I'm just saying.
How do we avoid authoritarianism in any political system? By not supporting it's masked bait-ideologies.
Which is as far as I understand what you are advocating.
And those trees happen to create oxygen for you. But by the time you notice, it'll be to late.
How is my advocating the abolishing of authoritative, coercive institutions at the same time advocating a bait-ideology that leads to authoritarianism?
You made an analogy to my opposition to the monetary system and wage labor. I was just saying that if you get rid of the environment that causes the problem then you will get rid of the problem.
Because that's what's going to happen in reality. Communism/collectivism/anarchism is not possible unless the powerful are going to be charitable and give up their power for the best of the small man. If the powerful don't do that, and why would they they seem to be working in the opposite direction, we only grant them more power by creating a void.
Sorry if I sound smug. What you are saying is: We should all jump out of windows, because then we can fly. Flying is much better than walking. Walking is bad. If you walk, you will wear your shoes out and you can trip.
Your error is that you assume that we can fly when we jump out of windows. Walking might really suck, but it's the least evil of all alternatives.
Sure. But obviously we both agree that getting rid of "the environment" in this analogy is not that great an idea.
That's what I wanted to say with it.
