🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <6gemod$ie$1@usenet50.supernews.com>, HiThere@outtatown.com
(HiThere) wrote:

> In article <gall-0704981602460001@usrts1m9.uwinnipeg.ca>, 
>  gall@uwinnipeg.ca (Norman Gall) wrote:

> >Sure. But honesty doesn't get you all the way to where you want to go. 
> >The guy with all the money and all the power to use it can use economic
> >force to crush people. That he says he is going to do it before hand
> >doesn't generate a free society.

> Okay, and we move the debate to property rights. I agree that economic power 
> is power--to do good or evil. But I see economic freedom as directly 
> correlating with political freedom (one is the the right to have the
tool, the 
> other is the freedom to act with the tool).

I concur, but I think we have a biconditional here. Insofar as economic
power is mitigated by political power, so too is political power by
economic power (or lack thereof).

> 
> As for honesty getting me where I want to go--money without political
power is 
> fruitless also. There were, for instance, any number of economically solvent 
> Jews in pre-war Germany. Honesty gets me closer to where I want to go than 
> externally applied subjective concepts like *fairness*.

I simply do not think that we need to rely on a subjective standard of
fairness. We have simple and complex notions of fairness and commonplace
ones.  Given a guy a fair shake is one of them. Logical relevance is
another one.

> Honesty at least lets me clearly know where I stand.

But if you find you are standing out in front of firing squad, your only
solace is knowing what killed you.

> >I don't think there is one and my argument doesn't depend on one - what it
> >does depend upon is the mount of harm done in society.  Surely you'd agree
> >that harm is morally relevant.
 
> Harm may be morally relevant but not legally relevant, and it was you
who gave 
> the example of one rascist store owner not being a real problem--but sure he 
> is, to 100% of the people he discriminates against. So is the difference 
> between a private problem and a public problem three people or...

Too simple.  If the bigotted storekeep runs a company where there are many
other sources for what he sells, very very few people will be harmed at
all.  If she is the lone source of a product, many many people can be
harmed. So it is the total amount of harm caused - not the harm caused to
a single person.

> >> > Again, these are not analogous situations. Employment is not a private
> >> > contract.

> >> No? It should be.

> >Why?

> Freedom of association and property rights for two quick benchmarks. 

Neither of which are (nor should be) absolute.

> Understand, I am not baiting here, but employment ceased to be private in 
> Germany and the Soviet Union, too. Some improvement. 

Post hoc ergo prompter hoc. Employment is already a public issue here and
thigs are better qua employment than when it was more private.

> Maybe public and 
> private--apart from restrictions on State power is not the core issue or 
> determinant (see below).

>  How do you guage _amount_ without quantifiers like how many people or 
> affected how much? I don't think the law is up to the task except when it is 
> given clear, unequivocal and objective referents, like *the _initiation_ of 
> coercion* (see below).

Ok. I'll bite.
  
> >Right. And the conceptual framework of these legal and moral concepts are
> >not a matter of taste. As you say, the majority view has nothing to do
> >with right and wrong.
> > 
> 
> Common ground :-)--but isn't the problem (among other things) one of 
> *subjectivity* as regards majority decisions.

I don't think so.  Without pending any real time explaining it, my
argument for moral objectivity (vice moral relativism) is that for the
most part many difference in moral systems (be they cultural or personal)
are not grave enough to count as ones in which the law is morally required
to become involved. Some are.  So, subjectivity in those decisions which
do not matter to the law are fine to be left to majority conscience. Those
that do matter cannot be left up to majority rule but must be compared
against reason.

> >> >I maintain - and especially now - that there is ample evidence
> >> >that employment is a public concern.

> I am nowhere near as sure, especially when it comes to issues like this--and, 
> as it happens, labour market economics and employment issues are the largest 
> part of my profession. I am an employment counsellor and strongly involved in 
> the distribution of labour market information on the 'Net.

This could be.  I think the acid test is whether we can prevent more harm
by regulating certain decisions (liek we do for the criminal law) or
allowing *acts* to sort themselves out.
  
> >> How can simply not giving someone something they didn't have in the first 
> >> place be coercion? 
> >
> >When they deserved to have it in the first place.  We all deserve by
> >reason of our humanity a fair shake.  There are clearly time when we
> >don't, but the default position is that we are all treated without
> >prejudice. These are the dictates of reason.
 
> *Deserved* based on what? Maybe forcing the bigot to hire the gay person 
> prevented him from--for instance--hiring a physically challenged person. 

Perhaps, but I am not advocating hiring anyone just on the grounds that
the applicant is gay, but that the employer *not* dismiss the possibility
of hiring her *just* on the groudsn that she is gay.  AS for the
handicapped person, the same applies.  If we have a lesbian, a
parapalegic, and me (say), the job goes to the best qualified to do the
job - period. Qualifications are relevant to job performance - sexual
orientation is not (and for the parapalegic the diability might be a
problem (I can think of being an infantryman as one such job).

What is deserved is the application of the dictates of reason to the selection.

> Again, understand that I see the legal issue as differing from the pure moral 
> issue.

Just so.

> >> What about freedom of association, also?

> >What about it? It isn't absolute and inalienable - else we couldn't put
> >people in prison.
 
> We put folks in prison--or _should_--only when these people have established 
> their own terms..that is, the denying someone of an objective right. 

I maintain that everyone has the reasonable expectation of being treated
fairly - and that there are subjective views of fairness doesn't detract
from the objective, dispassionate view of fairness. 

> (lets not get into crimes without victims)

Quite right - most of them shouldn't be crimes.


> >> Well, no-one said life would be easy--or that all people will be fair. 
> >
> >Sounds like an is/ought fallacy in the works.

> Not really, but I understand. All I meant was that I don't subscribe to the 
> Raulsian view--I think Nozick was on the right track before he started
fuzzing 
> around :-)

Gotcha.  But then I've always felt both these guys missed the boat. :)

> >> I've never expected either. 

> >your expecations (and the expectations of others as well) are irrelevant.
> >Morality is dispassionate.
 
> True--properly dispassionate as in _objective_, but that makes terms like 
> *fairness* sorta troublesome.

No - fairness *is* dispassion.  I'm in for shots from my traditional
allies here, but I think compassion should be left for sentencing, not
establishment of guilt.

> >>I actually think physicians _should_ be able to turn 
> >> patients away--_if_ they have not taken the Hippocratic oath, but the oath 
> >> should be voluntary. I think, for instance, that a Doctor [sic] (or other 
> >> individuals) should be able to say to a bigot *there is a price for your 
> >> attitude--and it is this: I won't help you.*

> >> No--again I refer to the principle against the *initiation of force*.

> >Again, why?
 
> Because the core issue is not one of privacy as defined as being between two 
> people, or public as defined by being between three or more. Certain and sure 
> sanctions against the initiation of force effectively limits what a
person can 
> _do_ to another person. My freedom not to be attacked (freedom _from_ the 
> initiation of force) I claim as a right since it imposes no positive 
> obligation on others. It simply means that I must be left alone unless and 
> until I instigate force against another--at which time the State or
protective 
> agency may properly defend me, based on my right to defend myself.

Of course I can simply ask why not placing an obligation is a sound
criterion, but we have now a problem with the notion of rights.  Why this
one and not another?

> And actually, the criteria of *positive obligation* is a useful one--and 
> differentiated issues like employment from, say, assault. Simply *not acting* 
> is sufficient on my part for you to retain your right not to be
assaulted. For 
> you or anyone to have a *right* to a job _imposes/requires_ a positive 
> obligation on others and _is_ an initiation of force.

So what? All this is predicated on is the British Common Law distinction
between acts and omissions. There are tons of arguments (some of whicha e
actually plausible) arging that in many many cases there is no difference
at all.

> Rights are something different from mere legal permissions.

Quite right - they are legal obligations.


Cheers,
n

-- 
"On the ordinary view of each species having been independently created,
 we gain no scientific explanation..." - Charles Darwin