Abolishing all coercive institutions and valuing the liberty of individuals.
I think greed is immoral (my opinion), but I disagree that the model forces people to practice greed. I don't see how laissez-faire demands greed.
Just because a person seeks to attain material wealth above their needs doesn't make them wrong or greedy in my eyes. I conceive of greed as being the unregulated drive for material wealth, which causes to commit acts of deception or fraud or self-harm in its name.
Laissez-faire capitalism doesn't coerce people to be greedy. No one will be aggressively forced to be greedy or thrown in jail for not attaining or wishing to attain excess wealth. You're confusing influence with coercion.
That's your opinion. I value the well being of my father, mother and brothers over a stranger's well being. In my opinion, that is morally right.
Love and compassion is good in most situations, but I can think of some situations where love and compassion is detrimental. There is no direct material benefit to the giver, but the giver may feel good by practicing charity.
It also doesn't follow that the dissenter is wrong.
My disagreement with your statements is in how authoritarian you come across on this matter.
Moral relativism is more descriptive to me than it is prescriptive.
Is the police force that protects private property a coercive institution?
Laissez-faire, in theory, works because of competition. And competition does not exist unless at least two parties are greedy for the same thing. If they are not, their enterprise fails to thrive and their families fail to eat.
Maybe not jail, maybe not at the end of a gun - but it uses something just as effective. The need to eat, the need for shelter. These things are only obtained in a laissez-faire environment if a person exercises greed.
I think we all make that judgment, but that's not quite what I'm saying. I am saying that each person has just as much intrinsic worth as any other. The fact that we sometimes ignore this intrinsic worth due to emotional attachment does not alter the fact of each person's equal moral worth.
But I'm not talking about material benefit - because materials are not ends in themselves. Happiness is not obtained through consumption.
It does if moral relativism is bunk.
Well, I know this may be a shock, but I abhor authoritarianism. I'm not advocating any particular system of economics or government, just pointing out some problems with laissez-faire.
That's pretty insightful, because moral relativism cannot be prescriptive by nature.
So you're talking about the way people happen to sometimes make moral decision, as opposed to talking about how they should make moral decisions.
When we talk about morally right/wrong, we are talking about shoulds, not what we happen to do.
Abolishing all coercive institutions and valuing the liberty of individuals.
Yes. The state is a coercive institution. A liberal democratic state is founded on the premise that a minimal amount of coercion is needed to protect individual liberties.
An example of a moral act for the Anarcho-Capitalist
At which point I asked if the police force to protect property was a coercive institution and you said
Therefor the anarcho-capitalist advocates abolishing the police force.
I'm guessing you didn't mean "all" coercive institutions in your first statement? I don't think you can have Capitalism without legally protected, police enforced, private property unless you are talking about privately owned police forces but do we still call that capitalism?
I suppose you could have capitalism without a police force, but it would be every man for himself or communal enforcement of the protection of property and individual liberties. I suppose you could still have private police who would enforce and protect, but there wouldn't be a legal limitation on the amount of coercion the private police could use. I admit that the development of a state seems inevitable in an anarcho-capitalist society. That's probably why the first anarchist movement was communist and collectivist.
Rand... she has been pretty well discredited.
Sure, vices have moral worth, in that they are morally harmful. That is their worth.
If we love money, we are diverting our capacity for love upon money rather than focusing that love upon people. And my guess is that people are more valuable than money.
But material wealth is finite. There is only so much stuff in the world.
The rate of the progress would depend upon the rate of the charity.
And it is progress for everyone. It is progress for the recipient because they have an improved standard of living. It is progress for the giver because their standard of living is not meaningfully harmed, and because by practicing charity they are practicing love and compassion for other people.
Think about it: A person with a billion dollars. Does a person need a billion dollars to live well, to be comfortable, to have the luxury to indulge interests? Not at all. However, we do have people that starve to death. Many thousands die every day from starvation.
So let me ask: is it better for the billionaire to keep his billion so that he can buy a new super yacht? or is it better for the billionaire to give a portion to the needy so that they can live?
Sure, vices have moral worth, in that they are morally harmful. That is their worth.
If we love money, we are diverting our capacity for love upon money rather than focusing that love upon people. And my guess is that people are more valuable than money.
But material wealth is finite. There is only so much stuff in the world.
The rate of the progress would depend upon the rate of the charity.
And it is progress for everyone. It is progress for the recipient because they have an improved standard of living. It is progress for the giver because their standard of living is not meaningfully harmed, and because by practicing charity they are practicing love and compassion for other people.
Think about it: A person with a billion dollars. Does a person need a billion dollars to live well, to be comfortable, to have the luxury to indulge interests? Not at all. However, we do have people that starve to death. Many thousands die every day from starvation.
So let me ask: is it better for the billionaire to keep his billion so that he can buy a new super yacht? or is it better for the billionaire to give a portion to the needy so that they can live?
You also must see a finiteness in love then? And I was asking WHY they are vices?
Discredited, maybe. But then what is the root of money? It is a tool of exchange. Money is almost anything you wish it to be. I don't
love money, I love what it can become, and what it can do. Now, which people are more valuable than something as versatile as wealth? Many more than i'll meet in a lifetime, surely, but not all of them. My love for people is earned, not entitled. I don't value people for their need, but their worth.
Money, then, appears as this distorting power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be entities in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence, and intelligence into idiocy.
Since money, as the existing and active concept of value, confounds and confuses all things, it is the general confounding and confusing of all things - the world upside-down - the confounding and confusing of all natural and human qualities.
He who can buy bravery is brave, though he be a coward. As money is not exchanged for any one specific quality, for any one specific thing, or for any particular human essential power, but for the entire objective world of man and nature, from the standpoint of its possessor it therefore serves to exchange every quality for every other, even contradictory, quality and object: it is the fraternisation of impossibilities. It makes contradictions embrace.
Greed is needed for competition? That's flat out false. The need or desire to acquire economic goods is necessary for competition, not rapacious desire.
Greed is not simply the desire to acquire beyond your own material needs in my eyes. This dictionary.com definition is more in line with how I see greed; the excessive or rapacious desire to acquire material possessions.
It is not a fact that each person has equal moral worth. It's a fact that some people feel that way in theory, but such a notion cannot be verified beyond personal opinions or sentiments. The notion to love your enemy died on a cross.
You're assuming that everyone can achieve the goal of happiness by giving to charity, i.e. being selfless. Consuming economic goods can lead to joy and contentment as long as they don't lose their economic security. The sense of happiness can come and go just like the sense of suffering.
In what sense is it bunk? Are you saying that the same lifestyle ethic is best for everyone?
I'm not saying that you sound authoritarian in terms of politics or economics. I'm saying that you sound authoritarian in terms of what you think is right and wrong for everyone.
Sure it can. I can tell someone to do whatever makes them happy as long as they don't directly harm anyone else. Is there not something relativistic about that?
What I'm talking about is the demand or claim that it's right for everyone to be altruistic. I do think that certain examples of altruism are good, but I don't think that I can make that judgment for every individual.
Also, morality or ethics isn't just normative. It's also meta-ethical. My meta-ethical positions are non-cognitivism, emotivism and universal prescriptivism (or implied imperative). There are some prescriptions that I believe everyone should uphold, but I don't always judge someone as immoral if they don't do what I would do in every given situation.
You also must see a finiteness in love then?
And I was asking WHY they are vices?
Discredited, maybe.
But then what is the root of money? It is a tool of exchange. Money is almost anything you wish it to be.
Now, which people are more valuable than something as versatile as wealth? Many more than i'll meet in a lifetime, surely, but not all of them. My love for people is earned, not entitled. I don't value people for their need, but their worth.
I believe Wealth is limited by consumers, not material. Correct me if I am wrong, but wealth can be created, and not just redistributed?
I wasn't talking about need, I was talking about worth. Need is not a claim on any man. The poor certainly "need" money more than a billionaire, but have they "earned" it? Inversely, a billionaire certainly does not "need" the money, but he/she has "earned" it.
Is human value measured by charity?
But desiring more than you need is excess - that's what excess means, immoderation. So greed is necessarily excessive. Just as you admit.
First, you misunderstand the Passion story. Jesus died in order to uphold that notion - his death being an expression of compassion.
That each person has equal moral worth is not a fact like water is composed of two hydrogen molecules and an oxygen molecule. That each person has equal moral worth is an ethical statement.
That people have varying moral worths is also an ethical statement.
Yes, I am assuming that altruism is a superior moral outlook than egoism.
I am saying that moral relativism is incoherent as an ethical theory.
All I am saying is that there is such a thing as morality. If that's authoritarian, okay.
Moral relativism cannot be prescriptive because it cannot tell us how we should and should not act - which is exactly what a moral theory is supposed to do.
Why not?
Luxury? Luxury requires the consumption of excess material. While a person enjoys his luxury yacht, another starves to death when the money for said yacht could have saved the dead person. Luxury bears harmful fruit.
Sure, Zeth, but that self-entitlement easily runs amok. Finding the right balance point is not an easy thing to do, especially in purely theoretical terms, because it depends upon our ability, our capacity for moderation and simple living, which requires practice.
The thinking that every luxurious purchase is selfish can also easily run amok, too. There is much misunderstood self-entitlement, a very liberal tossing around of the word "selfish". Some even consider others selfish simply on the basis that they do not do altruistic acts.
I think if we are to criticize the millionaires and very wealthy for not giving away their money to the needy, we should criticize everyone. No, obviously not everyone has the same ability to donate, but nearly everyone has some ability, and people could donate relative to what they have.
Having the capacity to act altruistically and neglecting to do so is selfish
At no one in particular, but there does seem to be a sense in some posts that charity is no fun, and that keeping one's money for a new video game or whatever is fun, and that people should do what sates their desire for pleasure by keeping their money for personal consumption.
Because it relies upon greed for economic productivity.
But material wealth is finite. There is only so much stuff in the world.
So then you would oppose a system that coerces people to be greedy, right?
Any proponents, or even dissenters, of this political faction? I recently skimmed over the term and my curiosity was not suppressed by the little I read. So, before researching, I again appeal to the accomplished minds of this forum. For? Against? Ideal? Anarchism? It sort of has a objectivist ring. Any insight??????
