I'm not entirely comfortable with my worldview, it's frankly a mess and very unprincipled. I'm not here to argue its case, especially- the one I presented was an extreme, altered version of my actual beliefs (in fact it was more an attempt at an opposite to your own- for examples purposes), the point I was really trying to get across is that "morality" is subjective, I'm not saying I think there's anything wrong with your arguments or your actions, it's just a little nitpick- probably not worth mentioning but I'm quite pedantic. More importantly, sorry, I looked back over the conversation and I realised I misread it, what you were saying was actually in line with this. Sorry I'll try and be more careful in future.
It all basically came out of this quote:
The Man In Black wrote:
I would not take the money by force. Because, by definition, the taking of wealth by force is immoral, is it not? Except when the government does it. Which is kinda a weird qualifier. OR...
It is only moral to take by force when a) the recipient of the wealth is not yourself and b) the person getting the wealth taken away from them does not need this wealth to survive.
Thus we take away a set of moral principles to act upon, and we get instead a condition: if its not for you, and it doesn't kill them, its okay, no matter what you do with it, no matter how brutally you take it away, its fine.
I would consider this moral imperative *bad* and illogical (punishing accomplishment and rewarding incompetance etc, Ollie has gone over this before and so have I). I hope you do as well.
-MiB
Which I've just found, and I think is a very well reasoned and sensible argument, unfortunately I only saw the first part of this and then thought MiB was saying that the taking of wealth by force is objectively immoral, which prompted my response. Of course, I now realise that was not what he was saying, I am very sorry for this mistake, which occured due to the lateness of the hour, too much caffiene and a healthy dose of stupidity on my part, I hope we can put this behind us but as I was quite unreasonable I recognise this may not be so, I will attempt to be more careful in future.
The Man In Black wrote:
Yeah, keeping whats mine is so immoral, robbery is a much better alternative.
-MiB
I believe my point was, its not immoral, its merely something I don't agree with (sorry if you were you being ironic). I thought this was clear when I wrote it but as I was referencing my (false) interpretation of your former comment I realise this was not so. As to the actual argument, I do think
you have got the moral highground, and robbing you is not a good alternative, but if I have to take the choice between robbing you and letting someone die, I'll take robbing you every time. Which I must admit is a highly unsatisfactory way to run things.
As an aside:
For those interested, the system of goverment MiB was suggesting suggested anarcho-capitalism to me, although considerably closer to capitalism (in that it still proposed a form of goverment, but relegated it to the position to which anarcho capitalism typically relegates the
elements of goverment) but since I have little knowledge of the system and none of libertarianism I'll try not to put words in his mouth. Regardless of whether he meant it or not, its a rather interesting idea (not to mention a practical alternative to the more extreme forms of anarchism) that I'd suggest people check out, as I'm doing now (although i
doubt it will cause me to discard my current quasi-utilitarian beliefs, it's good to keep an open mind). If it is what he meant, I'm sure he can explain it much better than I, but a quick google search brings up
here here ,
here and
here as possible resources. Cyberpunk fans may wish to check out the "The Star Fraction" which I'm ashamed to admit was untill this conversation re-sparked my interest was the sum of my knowledge
I bring it up because it seems most similar to MiB's proposal (although I don't mean to trivialise this established and respectable philosophy by quoting a science-fiction story as a major source, the book I guess is more personal to me than in any way notable)