I know
For your (lack of) ethics, your choice on how to play the game is correct. But you think, that if someone would suffer extremely negative psychic profits, choosing not to kill them would be unintelligent?
They don’t even see it as stealing. They also have a giant double standard. They are demonstrably not thiefs from their real life behavior.
“But you think, that if someone would suffer extremely negative psychic profits, choosing not to kill them would be unintelligent?”
Yes, because they’re thinking emotionally instead of looking at the incentives. Rationally speaking, it makes no sense not to kill them for the diamonds given the rules of the game. The rational man tries to figure out the incentives. In this case, the incentives are overwhelmingly to kill.
“they are demonstrably not thieves from their real life behavior”
But it’s not legal for them to rob you in person, it’s perfectly legal for them to do it with the government.
I don’t buy what bloom says. I don’t think he would become a murderer.
See this is why Conza brought up psychic profit, because people don’t ‘gain’ just monetarily. Apparently you didn’t understand. Economics fail.
The law has no teeth if they don’t get caught. I’m saying they could rob me really easily and not get caught, but still don’t.
I don’t even know why you reference ‘the law’ so much if all you care about is power. The law only applies if the government sees it, and if the government cares. So, in the roommate example, no one would see it. In areas like illegal drugs, often times, the government doesn’t care… If its all about power, you can abandon your legal fetish.
Also consider that I used to believe in the state when I was younger. Was I a thief and murderer then, but am not now? Are the only people who are not killers anarcho capitalists?
A very interesting bet. Unfortunately, we cannot find out either way. There’s always the possibility I’d puss out though.
You don’t need a reason to care about other people, it’s an end (i.e. a source of happiness) for most people (i.e. the non-sociopaths) itself. You can say that there isn’t really a reason to be alive or a reason to be entertained. That is missing the point though; praexeology only deals with means, the ends in themselves (as long as they are not merely intermediate ends) do not require any logic, they are simply given.
“See this is why Conza brought up psychic profit, because people don’t ‘gain’ just monetarily. Apparently you didn’t understand. Economics fail.”
People seem to value getting their medical bills paid over allowing people to keep their money. Obviously, the psychic benefit of being able to stay alive longer is worth the psychic loss of taking the money from someone else.
In my case, the psychic profit of getting lots of new stuff would be worth the psychic loss of having to kill some people to get that stuff. You fail.
“The law has no teeth if they don’t get caught”
But it would have teeth if they did get caught, and they’re obviously scared of that possibility. But with government, they have nothing to fear.
“The law only applies if the government sees it, and if the government cares.”
Exactly. The government doesn’t care about allowing people to steal from one another because the people don’t care.
“Also consider that I used to believe in the state when I was younger. Was I a thief and murderer then, but am not now?”
Well, how much younger? Did you understand how the state worked?
"You can say that there isn’t really a reason to be alive or a reason to be entertained. "
But those things benefit me, I desire to be alive, I like being entertained. People, in and of themselves, don’t do anything for me. I have no reason to care unless they do something for me. What good are these Africans to me?
I mean when I really think about it, you people are asking me to act against my own interest to preserve some moral principle I don’t care about. That doesn’t make sense. Explain to me why it’s in my interest not to kill these people in the example and I’ll change my answer. What do I gain by letting them live?
I don’t think anyone in this thread needs “treatment.” All human beings act in their own self-interest - it is biologically wired into us. “Uncompromising libertarians” gain the most by sticking up for the principles they think are the most moral, rational, and beneficial to society in the long run. Bloomj31 gains the most by following the letter of the law to his greatest material advantage in the short run.
I wouldn’t say that libertarians are “out of touch with reality,” they just disagree with reality and envision a society they think would be much better. I think Bloomj31 gets attacked because his point of view completely opposes the libertarian vision of a just society. He is not willing to sacrifice practicality and short-term material gain and dedicate himself to making the world “better.” He accepts the status quo and tries to “tell it as it is.” I think both points of view are valuable, and I’m glad Bloomj31 is on this forum.
Whether they like it or not, even die-hard libertarians act in thier own material interests at the expense of lofty principles. And whether he likes it or not, Bloomj31 suffers with the rest of us under a regime that legalizes theft, murder, and slavery.
Very good LeeO, very good.
No, people cannot attach any moral significance to it. Moral evaluations are subjective but they are not arbitrary. You cannot attach just any moral significance to murder for the same reason you cannot treat swear words in the same way you do any other word. Please watch this video by Steven Pinker for an explanation of the principle involved, here.
Clayton -
Thanks. Now I have a question for you. It seems that many people here completely misunderstand you and/or attack you personally and/or engage you in arguments that take a long time and don’t really go anywhere. So, as someone who is mostly concerning with material benefit, what do you have to gain from this forum? Is it just entertainment? (I find reading your discussions quite entertaining…)
Yeah passes the time.
Stealing a loaf of bread to save your family from starvation is normal. Gunning down innocent people for diamonds is not.
But this is what i predicted all along. I don’t fail… I proved exactly what I wanted.
The point is that you always focus on the law in your analyses, when the law in fact is not what matters. It is the power behind it. So please abandon your legal fetish and just talk about power. It will be a lot more consistent. In theory.
Why would the government do what the people want it to do…
Couple years. And I understood how the state works much, much better than the people around me now. People are rationally ignorant.
“Moral evaluations are subjective but they are not arbitrary. You cannot attach just any moral significance to murder for the same reason you cannot treat swear words in the same way you do any other word.”
So I’m biologically hardwired to see murder as undesirable or wrong, yes?
Were you reading the thread? Bloomj31 said he would gun down a bunch of people for money.
Politically correct crap.
That’s what utilitarianism is - correct.
No, he’s using your economic definition of rationality - it’s rational to kill people for profit. Of course you use that definition only when it suits you (and right now it doesn’t). Anyway, wipe the egg off your face.
The thing is, broom is more consistent than the utilitarian ‘libertarians’ - and he’s really an utilitarian - unlike the economists who don’t understand their own theory (or pretend not to when the the conclusions are inconvenient).
We’re not talking about stealing loaves of bread, we’re talking about 500 billion dollars every year in paid medical services. Much greater theft, in fact, than the imaginary diamonds are worth.
I understand the concept of rationally ignorant, it seems to the foundation of most libertarian assumptions about non-libertarians here. In other words, you guys tend to think “if people only knew what goes on, they’d definitely come to oppose it because people are naturally moral acting agents and they’d not be able to tolerate government if they knew the truth of it.”
In my example, I do know how government works but I’m a psychopathic outlier so even though I’m not ignorant, I’m just evil so I don’t disprove the general theory of rational ignorance. I get it.
Well the only reason we aren’t rationally ignorant is because there’s something wierd about us. We just happen to really enjoy political philosophy or something the way others enjoy dirtbiking.
Is this wrong? Do you want me to come up with a slew of psychological studies showing that people refrain from stealing when they can get away with it?
On the face of it, I would think that if the masses were more educated about political philosophy / dirtbiking, then there would be huge revolutions in both of those fields.
The problem is not whether bloomj31 pursues his self-interest or even whether he makes cynical assessments about what are the best ways to achieve his own interests given the current social environment in which he exists. Everyone does this, consciously or otherwise, to one extent or another. The problem is that bloomj31 is not a humanist, that is, that he is relatively unconcerned with the conditions for human happiness. If he could flip a switch that would make people around the world freer and happier without affecting his own life in any way (positively or negatively), bloomj31 would be indifferent to flipping the switch. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn’t flip it. But short of some good reason to flip the switch (that is, by flipping it his own life would be better in some way), and given no negative consequences to his own life, he would remain indifferent to flipping the switch. As a humanist, I find such an attitude disgusting and immoral.
Clayton -