Liberal Sociology, Social action, and the laissez faire school

Economics Political Theory
141

The threat of violence has to occur in the minds of the parties involved. If it does not, regardless of whether or not it was a possibility, it is not a threat of violence. If I were to threaten you, it would have to occur to me to threaten you. Just because you see it as a possibility in your disputes does not mean it is the case that other people even realize it is a possibility in their own disputes.

Just because you threaten your girlfriend with violence when she wants to watch a different tv show than you does not mean that I threaten my girlfriend with violence. In fact, I do not threaten my girlfriend with violence over tv shows. It does not even occur to me that I could beat her up over what tv show to watch…You may wish to impose upon your girlfriend in such a manner, but I feel great pity for your girlfriend that she is in such an abusive relationship.

It would also appear you don’t know much about law or what God thinks either, yet you still make known to us your opinions.

As I stated above, money is commonly accepted indirect medium of exchange. At what point does something become money? At what point does it cease to be money?

It’s the same thing with words. We know the meanings of words based on how people use them. “Gay” used to mean “happy”. Now it means “homosexual”. At what point did it change meanings? Was it after the first homosexual used it to mean homosexual? What about the second? Probably not, because people still would have been using it to mean happy. What about 100,000,000 Americans? Would it have meant that then too? Now nobody uses the word to mean happy. But when did it change?

It’s the same thing with law. No one knows exactly when a law ceases to become law or when something becomes law. We cannot point to the exact moment. But we can know if it is law or if it is not.

From our discussion, it appears that you only value statutory law as law. That is, as long as it’s written down on a piece of paper by someone with enough power, then it is law - even if it is unenforced. The problem here, is that you do not know about common law or customary law, both of which do not fit the definition you provided earlier. Furthermore, I believe that you actually do not know much about the history of common law or customary law, or even what societies/communities have used it or currently are using it today. You would greatly benefit if you were to research other systems of law, because as it stands now, you are very confused as to what law actually is.

142

It appears that you do not know much about Judaism, though you claim to be a Jew. I am a former Jew, but I am now an atheist. If you truly believe in God and are a Jew, then you would know that Judaism has rules regarding slaves in the Torah (which is written by God if you are a Jew and believe in God). However, you would also know that slavery is taboo in modern Judaism.

I suspect that at best, you are a reform Jew. It would probably be for the best if you just quit Judaism altogether because I can’t imagine you actually researching Jewish thought on law and morality.

If you want to know more about Judaism, I suggest you talk to FlyingAxe on the forums. I believe he is actually a practicing Orthodox Jew, so he would be more qualified to answer any questions you have about Judaism if you were so inclined to learn about it.

Furthermore, it is bizarre that you would say that you feel queasy about slavery because of the history of Jews. If you were not a Jew, you would not feel queasy? Your morality is quite bizarre, to say the least.

143

Does it have to occur consciously? Does it have to occur in the minds of all parties? You always represent a threat of violence to me because you can, at any time, engage in violence. Just because it doesn’t enter into your mind doesn’t mean it doesn’t enter mine.

I was asked for them.

That is because it is the only type of law which directly effects me. I have no concern with nullifying laws through disobedience or non-recognition nor do I acknowledge such attempts to do so. To me, people that do that are just breaking the law.

I don’t because I don’t study that stuff nor do I really have any interest in doing so.

144

I am not, nor have I ever been a practictioner of Judaism the religion. I was born into a Jewish family. I look Jewish. That might have been enough in slave days to gain the ire of other white people, I do not really know. If not then it really doesn’t matter to me.

No because I wouldn’t fear that my fate was tied to that of the black slaves.

145

So what? We have already established that you threaten violence for all you disputes. However, there exist disputes where the parties involved do not threaten violence, implicitly or explicitly. That is the point. I am not making a statement about all of your disputes. I am making a statement about all disputes. I will restate it again: The threat of violence is not a necessary aspect to disputes.

Obviously that is not the only criteria for your response because I have asked you already for your reponse to the analogies that I put forth. Don’t be obtuse.

Common law does effect you. It effects you less than it used to, but it does effect you. And you make no attempts to learn about it.

So why study statutory law? Your reason was that it effects you. So does common law. Yet you do not have an interest in that. I believe you do not really have an interest in law.

146

The mere presence of humans implies the possibility of violence because all humans are capable of violence. Your mere presence implies the possibility of violence. Just because it doesn’t occur to you or anyone around you doesn’t mean it’s not still there. It just means you’re oblivious. Neither you nor your girlfriend or any of your friends may consider yourselves capable of violence, but you all are. Your conscious mind may not focus on it, but that really doesn’t matter.

Any and all disputes that involve humans necessarily involve the possibility of violence, from the simplest disagreement onward. You just don’t think about it. Maybe your friends don’t think about it. Maybe your girlfriend doesn’t think about it. So you think you’ve escaped the reality that all humans are capable of violence at any time over any dispute. You have not.

I study statutory law because I find it interesting. I study the law so that I can try to obey it. I only have so many hours in the day and only so much energy to put towards study. I suppose that now that I think about it, I do study common law. Perhaps not to the extent that you do. I simply do not think about nullifying laws through non-compliance. To me that’s just asking for trouble. The laws don’t go away just because I might want them to.

147

No. For there to be a threat, it has to be conscious. Just because violence is a possibility does not mean that the threat of violence is necessary. I cannot threaten someone with violence if it does not occur to me to threaten them with violence. I am not claiming that it is not the case that all humans are capable of violence at any time over any dispute. I am claiming that the threat of violence is not a necessary aspect of a dispute. All I can see is that you are creating straw men and knocking them down.

148

So why study statutory law? Your reason was that it effects you. So does common law. Yet you do not have an interest in that. I believe you do not really have an interest in law.

Right, if your whole point is soething like:

I live in the US - I only care about how the US supreme court currently quotes statutory law - and I am going to apply that to every conversation on Mises.org a site named after a man who looked at the social sciences and social philosophy; I think you have entered the wrong site - this is probably why you’re threads tend to go on ad infinitum without much being cleared up. It’s two different languages

There is nothing wrong with legal positivism, at least half here (including myself) are probably legal positivists - but to just care about statutory laws as some meta - legal theory position is nonsensical - it is a position with only limited use. Even positivism presupposes custom.

149

Why does the threat have to be conscious? Why do both parties have to recognize it?

If I consider you a threat but you do not think you are a threat to me there’s still the possibility of violence between us in the event of a dispute.

150

I’ve been coming to this site for a couple years now. I know how this place works. It’s actually become much more chill. Used to be a bunch of ban happy moderators, now it’s whatever. I don’t mind not clearing issues up. Where’s the fun in that anyway? I suppose I could try to find a site where everyone agreed with me on everything but that’s kinda boring imo.

I appreciate what you’re trying to tell me, and I don’t really disagree with you. I’m really just waiting for Guild Wars 2 to come out anyways. Maybe play Diablo 3.

EDIT: There’s also something very charming about libertarians. I find the moralism interesting. The hatred for the state is…I don’t even know how to describe it. The paranoia is funny sometimes. I don’t fear the same things libertarians do and I find that fascinating.

151

Who said anything about God? This is more semantics - you and I clearly do not use the word “immoral” in the same way. Not all my word usages are the most common ones but they’re at least among the recognized usages and I can articulate where I am using words in an unusual way. You seem to just have your own private definitions for every word. Have fun with that.

Clayton -

152

K. So when you say slavery is immoral you mean it doesn’t bring you satisfaction?

153

I’ve been coming to this site for a couple years now. I know how this place works. It’s actually become much more chill. Used to be a bunch of ban happy moderators, now it’s whatever. I don’t mind not clearing issues up. Where’s the fun in that anyway? I suppose I could try to find a site where everyone agreed with me on everything but that’s kinda boring imo.

It’s not about agreeing or disagreeing, but what the forum is more designed for.

Just to be clear on what I am trying to say

I am saying

a)if you care or want to talk about how Supreme Justices intepret laws - that’s fine. However, it has limited application here, as it just isn’t a primary topic.

b) if you wish to discuss legal theory or social sciences you even better - that’s exactly what this site is built for. Though something seems lost in translation on your posts (which may or may not be your fault)

c) If you wish to discuss ethics, so be it - but you can not mix ethics with legal theories (once again, this may not be your fault) - one is ethics, one is legal theory. If you are making a mistake here it is entering in an ethical conversation by quoting law - which just doesn’t work - grammaticaly or logically whether you are a moralist or not. You have to stick roughly with your view might makes relevant and stick with that - the statutory law can only be used as some type of example at best - not an argument

hope that helps. It’s hard for “exotic” views to come in and not get tangled in more “native” languages when they are outnumbered and bombarded by posts.

154

That’s good advice I appreciate that thank you.

155

No, I mean it in the same sense as a medical doctor who says “this infectious disease is unhealthy” - slavery is a sickness of the social order. A social order with slavery is ill, there’s something wrong with it. The health of a social order can be assessed in two different ways. The first and less interesting, is its suitability to self-propagation (reproductivity of its members).

The second and more interesting is the harmoniousness of the social order with the ends of individuals within it. If most or all people, in seeking their satisfaction, do so without injury to or from the social order, then this is a “healthy” social order. The ends of individuals are aligned with the environment in which they exist. But the modern environment has changed dramatically from that which obtained 10,000, 1,000 or even 100 years ago which has lead to a significant maladaptedness in the naive pursuit of one’s ends (pursuit of what feels good, avoidance of what feels evil) to one’s true ends (attainment of satisfaction within the modern environment).

This is not an indictment of social changes (we don’t need to “reform society”) nor of the individual (we don’t need to “reform human beings”). However, there is a deficiency in the social mechanisms that perform “impedance matching” between the environment and the expectations of the individual: social norms, law, culture and custom, family traditions, etc. These social mechanisms are the very things responsible for propelling the rapid change in our environment - without them, humans would still be sleeping in cave and throwing hand-carved spears at wild boars on the Savanna, if that.

In the process, they have provided the “push-pull feedback” on the individual so that his appetites and phobias would be aligned with the environment, even as it has rapidly changed. It is my view that this mechanism in modern times is seriously deficient in ways that we can specifically identify and that this deficiency is responsible for the widespread malaise and depression in modern, wealthy society in a time when unprecedented numbers of human beings should be attaining the highest levels of flourishing and self-actualization ever achieved in history.

To bring it back to slavery, I think that slavery is one of these specifically identifiable deficiencies. When slavery is allowed and commonplace, it is indicative of a massive mismatch between the reality of the social order and the desires of the individual which, in turn, is indicative of a deficiency in the mechanisms that should be ameliorating such mismatches: law, culture and custom, social norms, family tradition, and so on. When I say “slavery is immoral”, this is what I mean.

Clayton -

156

I see. Thanks for clearing that up.

157

A person cannot threaten another without making a conscious effort to do so. Perhaps we have to define threat. From wiktionary on threat:

I have been using the first definition for this entire thread. Perhaps you have been using threat to mean “a menace”?

Regardless, my point has to do with definition one. A person cannot make “an expression of intent to injure…another” if he is not already conscious of making the threat. It is my belief that not every disagreement has an expression of intent - implicit or explicit - to injure another looming in the air. I have been in situations where there has been no expression of intent to injure but there was a disagreement.

Ah, it does appear that you have been using threat to mean “menace”. Firstly, as I said above, it has nothing to do with my point. Secondly, we have already established your predilection for violence. You should probably stop using yourself as an example, as we are postulating situations where you are not present.

158

Semantics. But I suppose based on this definition you are right. In this case your ignorance of the “menace” every single human being potentially poses strengthens your argument.

159

Definitions are important. There is no need to try and dismiss my point because you misunderstood it.

I accept your gracious concession.

Back to categorical statements, eh? I suppose I better start feeling threatened by every toddler that starts throwing a tantrum. You may wish to open a book on logic.

160

Logic is not time- or space-dependent. You’ve already essentially stated that you consider all laws to be worthy of respect because you presume they’re backed by more power than you yourself can muster. That includes slavery laws, segregation and other discrimination laws, and laws requiring Jews to be hauled off to death camps. All of them - no exceptions.

It’s one thing for you to want to readily acquiesce to power when you encounter it. It’s another for you to want - if not expect or require - everyone else to do the same as well.