nirgrahamUK I couldn’t think of the concept, but you are spot on[Y]
no, its a purely preferential statement. i.e
in Mingy Jongo’s personal opinion life on planet earth would be ‘better’ if people were bound into a particular social contract, call it ‘MingyJongoSocTract’, and abided by it, and made each other to abide by it.
this concept has obvious problems in terms of its marketability
Ask yourself this: Is it good for society? Or is it detrimental? Those are moral questions. Moral=good
To have this all boil down to “two”, based on what?
What is preferred is good, unless of course we are discussing degenerate events. I value or prefer something cause I think it’s better. Example: I choose ice cream over salad right now. I’m valuing the ice cream’s sweetness. I think it tastes good (moral). Now if I was in the mood for something healthy, then a salad is preferable and would be good and thus moral in achieving healthiness while I sit and eat. Moral is simply a term of excellence.
i understand moral completely differently, it is not mere preference. there is a reason that the language has two distinct phrases with obviously different contexts and meanings, consider there is the phrase ‘i dont like’ and ‘this is wrong.immoral’
i dont like murder ,murder is wrong.
i dont like britney spears music, britney spears music is wrong
I think you’re making ethical statements. Moral is more fundamental than ethical thus why me preferring ice cream is moral. Yet also me murdering somebody is immoral. Ethics steps in when we begin to ask such questions as: What is right and what is wrong? That’s ethics. Robert Pirsig does a good job showing this throughout philosophical history and thus gave reasons to support his metaphysics of quality. Thus he shows clarification on “morals” that different philosophers as well as others back to the time of ancient Greece. It’s a philosophical disclaimer, not what is admittedly conventional or everyday usage in mainly western States. In most parts of the world outside of western civilization it is more common knowledge to identify with morals the way I am. It is present in Western Civilization but has been buried by logical positivism.
ethics is the branch of philosophy concerned with morals/morality.
aesthetics is the branch concerned with preferences.
dang I wrote a post and forget everything i wrote… the post couldn’t connect back to mises for some reason…
anyways… to logical positivists that is how they branch philosophy. But in most countries outside Western Civilization it is common knowledge that morals and beauty go together. It is in Western Civilization too, but has been buried by logical positivists. “Pursuit of happiness” is actually an appearance of this more fundamental understanding. Hutcheson wrote about this and Jefferson read his books. Locke also discussed this. This is a tradition of understanding that can be historically traced back to Greece.
Right, perfectionist ethics tie aesthetic values closely with ethical ones.
If my social contract was good enough, people would agree to it. If it sucked, people wouldn’t. Simple as that. No one is “bound” to it whether they agree or not; they can either break it, or simply choose to not adopt it in the first place. The better social contracts are, the more people abide by it for security, and are more likely to attract other people. Just like the concept of natural rights and anarchy. If it appealed to people, more and more would agree to try to implement it. Anarchy just needs to be advertised! Why not give it a new name if people keep associating it with chaos and disorder? It is simple marketing, lol.
By the way…
I cannot believe that no one here has realized that the end result of keeping contracts, where a few companies specializing in safety compete for customers, is also what will happen in anarchy! Natural rights may not exist, but the free market actually proves that policies which assumes their existence will garner more support than ones that don’t. If people had the choice between paying $100/yr for defense on the condition that they could not smoke pot, paying $100/yr for defense that couldn’t care less what you smoked as long as you didn’t hurt others, or to turn down the offer completely, most will pick the second one, and turning it down completely would be second place. One might have a reason for protection. Another might not think it would be worth it. No one who isn’t delusioned would pick the first one, however, and it would eventually go broke. A social contract in of itself is not a moral or ethical entity. However, the rule to always keep voluntary contracts is. And it just so happens that the protection of life, property, and freedom is, by NATURE, the end result.
So everyone here is on the right track already. We have just arrived to the agreement of protecting life, liberty, and property differently. You say natural rghts, I say rights arising from nature. To-MAY-to, to-MA-to.
You know you just said that I don’t exist.[^o)]
Well since you don’t have a reasoned argument we’ll just call it a day.
The absence of a stated position or idea, doesn’t prove it does not exist.
Thanks for letting us know. We were hours from tearing the Institute down and moving on to another school of thought. [;)]
Sounds to me like you are going out of your way to create your own path to the same conclusions. Whatever floats your boat, but it’s wholly unnecessary.
Here is my point:
Natural rights do not have to exist automatically. The free market shows that between these three conditions:
-
Complete protection of life, liberty, and property, except for the condition of a small fee,
-
Partial protection of life, liberty, and property, except for the condition of the same small fee,
or
- No protection at all with no fee,
The majority of people will pick the first, some people will pick the third, and no one in their right mind will pick the second. This is assuming that the outside protection is more effective than protecting oneself. If there was no fee, it can be argued that everyone would pick the first.
Using simply the law of supply and demand, I have shown that the protection of life, liberty, and property are naturally preferred to partial protection for the same price. Hence, “rights arising from nature”.
Sorry, that’s my bad. 
there is nothing contractual about your social contract.
whereas under natural law people can enter into actual contractual arrangements. You have said goodbye to contracts in favour of mere promises or wish-thinkings.
If I say that I will provide a service for a small fee and fail to provide the service, then I have broken the contract. In a sense, we have both promised something. Contracts are promises, and can be broken. To charge that I am “replacing contracts with promises” is like saying I am replacing apples with fruit from an apple tree.
The premise of self-ownership itself, at the root of the argument, is false.
It’s also circular to try to derive ownership concepts from an ownership concept.
Thank you, that is exactly what I’m trying to explain.