I don’t mean to necessarily challenge you, but Bhopal-esque disasters don’t occur everyday. Yes, it was horrible, but I don’t think you can pigeonhole every single capitalist as evil. There are select men and women that are like this. But, I think theb point here is what protections and benefits has the state afforded these men and women?
I’m abstaining from morally judging these people, but it seems difficult to argue that businesses aren’t only concerned with maximizing profit. Their behavior is completely amoral. Why wouldn’t a business externalize as much as it (profitably) could?
All sorts. The legal system is based upon how much money you have. Patents, IP, copyrights are all state constructs. Lobby groups buying and selling politicians and their policy. If an entrepreneur wants to jeopardize the safety of his employees, the state will prevent his workers from exacting revenge.
Businesses aren’t any more or less moral than the people who run them, and not all business owners are amoral. Neither are businesses necessarily any more or less moral than any other group of individuals. What class one belongs to does not determine how moral one is.
When a business takes on a life of it’s own (corporate charter) it becomes almost analogous to the “tragedy of the commons”. Anonymous shareholders actually “own” the business, but the decision makers are only concerned with increasing profit for these shareholders. Their careers depend on it. Hence, neither party feels personally responsible for doing sometime terrible things to achieve this end.
I never claimed it did. Morality is like icing on a cake, it is not necessary, nor particularly integral, for action.
What is value and what is moral; these are the same questions. I don’t see it any other way.
Sometimes what people value and what they therefore find moral are not the same as what other people value and find moral: free-will is grand.
I would agree with that.
Sure is.
Don’t try to out logic people. Don’t talk about economics. Don’t talk about the free market doing X or Y better than the state. Don’t offer solutions to social problems. These things go in one ear and out the other without even being considered. Ever. It is a total waste of time, both yours and theirs. THEY AREN"T EVEN LISTENING TO YOU!
Show the gun in the room, show the gun in the room, show the gun in the room.
The only point in a debate with this type of person is to find out if they will shoot you if you disagree. If they won’t they are on your side. If they will walk away.
cool
With that in mind. Then morals are necessarily of human action. Human action is necessary, deliberate, purposeful, and the actions taken by humans are preferences, which semantically is value, and we both agree that the question of value is the question of morality. That’s praxeologic.
This is probably just a semantics discrepancy, but when I think about “value” vs “morality”, the difference is that morality implies some absolute, objective meter against which action is compared. Value seems to be a subjective measure of action. I’ve had some very lengthy discussions on this forum that just boiled down to understood definitions of words. If you are saying that to you, value and morality have the exact same meaning, then we agree.
We agree on a basic level. But then I think it may get a little more complicated, not necessarily in understanding, but the description of the context gets more complex (has more to it), and let me know how you would answer these questions:
Economist: an individual that studies economics; of course some economists are better than other economists in the task performance of studying and the knowledge that comes with the studying.
1 - Do you study economics?
2 - This isn’t boxing, but rather a bar room brawl in which the defender is therefore defined as somebody that is physically resisting another individual that has attacked what has been termed the defender. First, do you acknowledge that such an event is possible? Second, is this kind of fight in which one individual is an attacker and the other individual is a defender is this an economic exchange?
or should I post a new thread?
Not really.
It seems that this situation is possible, but I’m not really sure what this has to do with economics.
Let’s assume this situation is possible, if that’s ok, then didn’t I describe to you what happened or what is possible to happen between two people in a bar room? I mean it’s not impossible. People are capable of these kind of actions.
?