RE: Understanding the free market (or how you should learn to stop worrying and not be butthurt)

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Understanding the free market (or how you should learn to stop worrying and not be butthurt)

in circlejerk •  7 years ago 

Unfortunately, as much as I wish you were right (and I do—I love the labor theory of property...I’m an old school non-proviso Lockean from back in the day), I’m certain reality doesn’t conform to what you are saying.

Think about it semantically.

When we say “Law” if we’re talking about scientific concepts, we mean “the way the universe that we know necessarily works until it is falsified.”

Physical laws are falsifiable. You can run experiments on them and test them. (Newton’s Laws of Motion—in inertial reference frames haven’t been falsified yet). So we can use them to predict future events. For non-scientific purposes, we can “prove” that they are “immutable” and we can’t “get around them.” Physical laws just apply, no matter our opinions about them. (I understand that scientifically speaking, ‘falsifiable’ is not ‘proved’ but I’m saying ‘proved’ in the colloquial sense for laymen).

Logical laws are axiomatic (such as they are, depending on if you believe in them or not): You don’t “prove them,” or run experiments on them. They just “are” because that’s how our brains have to work (or because we’ve defined them that way). We can say “A number is equal to itself,” (x = x) and don’t have to run experiments on it, because it’s necessarily true, either because of the way we’ve structured the concepts or because of the way our brains/minds are built.

But these “moral laws” you’re talked by about don’t work like that.

I wish they did. The system you are calling “moral law” is (I think at least) a system that would be the best for everyone under almost every definition of “best.”

Yet none of what you are talking about work the way those other things we all agree are “laws” work.

You say moral law are “the rules we can easily recognize and agree to because they are how things are morally.”

But “laws” don’t need “agreement.” In fact, whether anyone agrees or disagrees with a law, is besides the point for the fact of a law’s existence.

You might disagree with Newton’s First Law of Motion, but (in any inertial reference frame) you CANNOT break it, no matter much you disagree. It just is.

You might not agree with the commutative law, but no matter how hard you disagree, within our existential frame, “a+b = b+a.” You could spend every moment of every day of your entire life disagreeing with it, but you couldn’t break it. It just is.

Moral laws don’t work that way.

You can assert that the moral concept “the fruits of your labor are yours” is a Moral Law, but people do things everyday in which the fruits of Person “A’s” labor is not considered “Person A’s.”

In other words, people who disagree with this law can and do “break it.”

That’s not how Physical laws work. Or logical laws.

And it’s not even like positivistic laws, which are propounded by humans, and then, if they are broken, the law-breakers, while within the system in which they broke the law, always have a possible risk of punishment by the people who propounded the law.

People break moral laws all the time without any risk of consequences, because often the “moral laws” are th e exact opposite of the “positvistic laws.”

Taxes. Lots of people would say that he concept of taxes is a violation of moral law.

In America (and most other landmasses in this Earth), the positivistic law makes the concept of taxes not just encouraged, but mandatory.

That all leads me to believe that there are no moral “laws” in any sense of the word law.

Moral “laws” aren’t “unbreakable” in the same sense that Physical laws and Logical/Mathematical laws are “unbreakable.”

Moral “laws” don’t guarantee some possibility that if someone breaks them, they will be punished. Lots of people are actually rewarded for breaking various standards that people consider “moral laws.”

If only it were true. I wish the morals you are talking about were “laws.” Because I agree with them, as strongly as you do.

But I can’t find anyway to justifiably prove their existence. And I’ve tried, because I want it BAD.

tl;dr - Moral “laws” aren’t laws because they don’t necessarily exist on this Earth, in this existence, in this reference frame, even if everyone disagrees with them, like Physical laws or logical/mathematical laws. And they’re not like “laws” made by “lawmakers” because those laws always come with some possibility of punishment. Moral “laws” can and are broken all the time and the people breaking the moral “laws” are oftentimes rewarded and have statistically 0% chance of being punished for that breaking. I wish—hard—that the moral “laws” you are talking about really existed.

But I’m as certain as one can be that they don’t.

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Too right, I'm also confused by the concept of moral laws. Morality is subjective at best.

Though it is possible to stick to axioms as far as they are non-contradictory.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I find this to be a thought provoking discussion :)
I myself am inclined to be a bit of an anti-moralist. That isn't to suggest I am a bad person. I care for my friends, and my family, and those I value and trust, just as much as the next person (side note: is having a sense of morality based in empathy?), but that I care isn't because I should, or ought, to care.
The idea that you should do x, y or z is often a regulating statement. It is, and often has been historically, a provision or edifice, or expression, of power.
It is often used to morally abuse, regulate, to shame, or to put people in there place, all in the name of what you should do, because its what is self evidently right or good.
And it is currently a prevalent, and often abused, part of our online social world. The naming and shaming all in the name of what is right, good or proper and decent (won't anyone think of the children!) occurs on the left, right, and in the centre, on a daily basis, again and again.
And yet, I care for my friends, family, and those I trust, not because I should care. I do so, just because I do. And if I cared only because I should care, it wouldn't be the same at all now would it?

Note - I still teach my children right and wrong (funny that. Like i said, am a bit of an anti-moralist). I guess establishing reasons for good behaviour and asking how we should act is still important, it establishes ethical principles. Yet, it is true that its a very short step from a principle to a standard.