“Why should either two men live at the discretion of three, or three at the discretion of two. Both propositions are absurd from a reasonable point of view. If being a slave and owning a slave are both wrong relations, what different does it make whether there are a million slave owners and one slave, or one slave owner and a million slaves? Do robbery and murder cease to be what they are if done by ninety-nine percent of the population?”
- Auberon Herbert
For more see Voluntaryism: The Political Thought of Auberon Herbert by Eric Mack
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If killing people was the norm – we’d all kill
the belief that killing is bad is not a God given – it is an idea that we agree on because we all accept the consequences of it – because we all fear to live in a world where at any moment we might be killed by another
the belief that personal property laws should be enacted and upheld are precisely the same
but when 99% believe that what the 1% have should be taken from them
that’s when you should stand in front of your wealth and declare theft an absurdity.
As all growth falters and the darkness looms
we billions watch, our fear growing each day.
Some sit in their homes in their empty rooms
stare at their screens and have nothing to say,
or cry their tears of rage and rising fear
through powerless words that their fingers spray.
And others, their numbers growing each year,
complain bitterly and head for the street
while politicians and the rich all sneer.
And well they might those who have life so sweet.
They live in a dream blind to what will come.
Huge numbers suffer, resources deplete
and all of your plans to what will they sum?
To revolution and a boundless slum.
http://thepeakoilpoet.blogspot.com/2011/10/revolting-ode.html
The relativist theory of morality is not tenable. There’s a difference between saying, “I don’t want anyone to take my stuff” and “Taking things without permission is morally wrong.”
There’s a difference between saying, “I want your car so I am going to take it,” and “I want your car so it is morally good right and just that I do so.”
The first is an expression of preference. The second is an appeal to universal principle.
One person’s preference is no better than any other person’s preference. One guy says “I want X” and the other says, “I don’t want you to take it.” Fine. The stronger one wins. That’s not ethical principle. That’s just the law of nature, which is to say, not a law at all.
In order for an assertion of universal principle to be valid, it must not be self-defeating. You cannot legitimately say, “It is universally wrong to steal, except as applied to me.” This assertion is self-defeating, because the “except as applied to me” is incompatible with the prior assertion that the rule against stealing is universal. It’s self-contradictory nonsense.
As a result, all normative assertions must be universally applicable, because it is universality that distinguishes them from mere expressions of preference, none of which has any more legitimacy or moral authority than any other.
It’s not a universal truth unless everyone agrees it’s a truth.
But we live in a world where there are no universally held “truths” – we have laws and we have cultural traditions of “truth” but they are not universally held.
Even in physics and mathematics there are struggles of such an idea.
What i assert is that “law” follows from ethics and ethics follows from the majority’s state of mind. If everyone thinks killing and stealing is the norm then any one trying to stand for something else will get trampled.
In the end the ONLY laws are the laws of nature (whatever they might be but i guess “the strong prey on the weak” is one) – I watch it constantly, every single day, predation – by those who can get away with it – it fills news feeds.
In fact, if you look deeply at the first three commandments of Moses, you will see that they are about the nature of universal truth – that there is only the whole truth and that selecting any part of things and trying to assert that that is “truth” will always lead you astray.
http://thepeakoilpoet.blogspot.com/2011/09/breaking-three-breaks-one-and-two.html
pop
Sorry to burst your bubble, but morality is subjective.
However, it just so happens that this is perfectly OK and entirely consistent with libertarian and anarcho-capitalist principles.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but morality is subjective.
However, it just so happens that this is perfectly OK and entirely consistent with libertarian and anarcho-capitalist principles.
>>> “It’s not a universal truth unless everyone agrees it’s a truth.”
No, that’s incorrect. You and Mr. Dell are both incorrect on this point. Morality is not subjective.
Preferences are subjective. But expressions of preference are qualitatively different than normative assertions (i.e., morality, ethics, laws, etc.).
Preferences can contradict one another because preferences are, by definition, subjective. To say that “I believe X” or “I don’t want you to to x” are mere preferences. These are positive statements. They are (we assume) factually, literally, physically true — you want some state of affairs to exist more than you want some other state to exist.
For example, you may say “I prefer having that $100 bill in my wallet rather than in yours.” And you may say, “I prefer having that $100 bill in my pocket, actually.” These two expressions of preference are incompatible with each other. Our mutually-incompatible preferred states cannot both come to exist. But both statements are still true, and can be true at the same time.
In contrast, a normative assertion is, by definition, an objective, universal assertion that some action is wrongful. Normative assertions claim that it is WRONG for X to occur. A normative assertion cannot rationally claim that X is both wrongful and not-wrongful at the same time.
Now, to say that “It is wrong for you to take this $100 bill from me against my will” is a normative assertion. I cannot validly claim that it is wrong for you to take my money, while AT THE SAME TIME claim that it is just, good and morally right for me to go take $100 from someone else against his will. On the one hand, I have claimed that taking stuff from me is objectively and normatively WRONG (not just unwanted), and yet I am also claiming, at the same time, that it is RIGHT when i do it. Contradiction, ergo false moral assertion.
True morality is objective and rational, i.e., not self-contradictory. In other words, we can identify false morals by their self-contradictory nature. They are not false because you, me or some percentage of the population doesn’t agree with them. They are false when they disagree with themselves.
For example, you cannot rationally claim that 2+2+4, while AT THE SAME TIME rationally claim that 2+2+5 AND ALSO that 4 is not equal to 5. These three assertions, taken together, are not rational. They contradict themselves. There’s no law of nature that says that 2+2 must always and everywhere equal 4. We can say 2+2=5 just as easily. But we cannot say that 2+2=4, and that 2+2 also equals 5, and that 4 does not equal 5, all at the same time, without talking nonsense.
Likewise, you cannot claim that it is wrong when someone invades your body and property while also claiming that it is not-wrong for you to invade people’s body and property. There’s no law of the universe that’s going to punish you for stealing other people’s stuff, but to claim that others are objectively wrong for stealing from you, while you are objectively not-wrong for stealing, is simply self-contradictory nonsense.
(By the way, the strong do not prey on the weak. Predators take down animals far stronger than themselves all the time. Bacteria kills most people, and no one would say you are not stronger than a bacterium. These adjectives (strong and weak) are merely your interpretations of a complex reality.)
Such is the fallacy of democracy.
_
Why should any man obey any other man ?
Respect, willingness and contract.
Excellent quote. It reminds me of Yuri Maltsev calling socialism “public slavery.” Perfectly apt.
Beautiful quote. It gets to the essence. Government is always a slave master. The question is to what degree?
This quote reminds me of Nozick’s “Tale of the Slave.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxRSkM8C8z4
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