I didn't cheat to get dealt the hand that I got, and neither did my parents or their parents, and on and on.
You had the same amount of choice about the family you were born into as anyone else did: zero. You or I do not deserve the life we were born into any more than someone in the third world deserves the life they were born into.
I'm not saying you should feel guilty for the life you have - you shouldn't. However, you should be grateful. We in the West have already won the only lottery that matters. We have so much, and yet many of us take if completely for granted, or worse - develop a sense of entitlement.
As with all problems in this planet, most people (including myself) are too stupid, lazy and/or greedy to do anything about it...
If business were a race to the bottom, then why have people been paid more and more and more over the last five hundred years. Think about all the black slaves in America. Think about all the serfs in Russia. Think about the bonded laborers. Ever heard of anybody being "bonded out" these days? Hell no, they stopped doing that 150 years ago.
Most corporations are completely amoral. A select few are arguably evil. They are all in a desperate search for short-term profits to the exclusion of all else. If they ever paid their staff more, it was a matter of necessity not choice.
If you examine corporate behaviour in the economic incentive zones in South-East Asia, it is clear that any statements you might hear about corporate responsibility and ethical behaviour are just bullshit PR.
I would recommend Naomi Klein's book No Logo for a better picture of how we are treating people who have few other options other than starving.
I mean, read your own argument. In your supposed race to the bottom, capital is actually having to flit from here to there because EVERYBODY THEY PAY gets BETTER AND BETTER OFF, and demands higher and higher pay.
And rather than give it to them, we spend resources to search out other people to exploit. That's the problem. Fine, let capital go where it wants, but make sure that labour and environmental standards go with it. If that were the case, we would not be open to charges of exploitation.
As it is, we give illiterate peasants the choice to starve, or work for starvation wages in sweatshops. If the workers complain and try to improve their lot, we shut down the sweatshops and move them somewhere else.
I can see how it works to the advantage of the executives who run the corporations that exploit their workers, and I can see how it works to the advantage of Western consumers, but I don't see how it works for the advantage of the oppressed people at the bottom.
That's not a race to the bottom. It's a desperate search for vanishing cheap labor.
Exploitation by any other name...
The only difference is that we benefit from it at the moment...
I don't understand how offering someone a voluntary job is "exploitation." If the workers in question had better alternatives, wouldn't they be taking them? Isn't that just another way of saying that the company in question is offering the workers a better alternative than any other?
If Western corporations paid living wages to the staff in South-East Asia, you would have a point. However, your argument fails apart because it's hardly voluntary. We give them a choice between starvation or industrial-revolution-era working conditions paying subsistence wages. If they try to organize and demand better wages and/or working conditions, the factories close down and relocate to other "economic incentive zones" that have policies more favourable to the sweatshop owners.
So, we barely give them enough to survive, and if they try to make a better living for themselves, we abandon them.
How is that noble? Furthermore, when you take into account that the workers in the West who used to do the same jobs made exponentially more than the present workers are making, it becomes obvious that the corporations could easily afford to pay living wages to their sweatshop serfs and still save a bundle.
Greed is the only reason I can think of that explains why they wouldn't.
Again, I don't get it. If I voluntarily (i.e., the "free" in "free market") pay $125 dollars for a pair of sneakers, how am I getting "screwed"? I had $125. You had a pair of sneakers. I would rather have the sneakers than the $125. You would rather have the $125 than the sneakers. We exchange, and -- this is the very key to capitalism and the free market -- we have *both* profited. How much you paid to have the sneakers manufactured is irrelevant. The question is how much you and I, respectively, value the sneakers vs. the $125.
The existence of cartels and excessive profiteering pretty much disproves the notion that there is a free market out there. Even so, the reason Western economies have done so well in due to the purchasing power of the middle class. Serfs in present day sweatshops (who typically earn less than $2/day) cannot afford to purchase the products they manufacture. As such, they are unable to participate in this "free market" in any significant capacity.
Classic economic theory does not require that the working class be oppressed. In fact, the whole point of neo-conservative economics is that the benefits initially enjoyed by the wealthy class are supposed to trickle down to the masses at some point. It is hard to justify oppression and exploitation on the grounds that they might starve to death otherwise.
Yes, paying people money for work they are willing to do is clearly evil. Exploitation is a problem, but isolating a country is not going to improve the situation, and there are a lot of people who would rather be exploited than hungry.
That's not the point. The workers there are paid a fraction of what people were being paid here to do the same job. Western corporations could pay those people a living wage and still save a bundle - but they choose to pay starvation wages instead. But that isn't good enough, those corporations are always on the lookout for economic incentive zones that offer lower wages and fewer environmental
restrictions.
So, instead of letting the people starve, we give them industrial revolution-era working conditions and subsistence wages, and congratulate ourselves for giving them a hand up?
It's a disgrace!
Look at China and N. Korea; China decided to open up their economy, and kaboom, here they come, while N. Korea is stuck in the past.
Dude, that is a seriously lame example. There are many things that differentiate China from North Korea that might have something to do with their relative economic power - area, population size, abundance of natural resources, etc.
If you honestly think their economic policies are the only differentiator, you need to read more.
By the third year of an outsourcing deal, after all the costs have been squeezed out, companies get antsy to find a new locale with an even lower overhead
This is the biggest problem I have with globalization: we have removed all constraints from capital and freed it from all other considerations. It is truly a race to the bottom - who has the lowest labour costs, who has the fewest environmental restrictions "wins" some starvation wage jobs until we can find someone else who can be exploited even more.
The fear used to be that jobs were being sent south to Mexico. But when Mexicans workers start demanding fair wages, we sent the work to Viet Nam, where people earn $2 per day. But even that looks pretty expensive when there are people in China willing to work for $.50 a day.
It's exploitation plain and simple, and we don't care because we are insulated from the uglier aspects of it. Of course, we are getting screwed too - those over-priced sneakers are now manufactured for a fraction of what they used to cost, but we still pay roughly the same price at retail. At least the shareholders are happy, but if they could find someone who would work for $.25 a day, they would be even happier.
Whenever someone argues in favour of a living wage, we are told it is too expensive. What a shame that poverty has become an official requirement of our economic system.
If we found ourselves working in the sweatshops for less than a buck a day, I wonder if we would be grateful...
No, I'm not. A barrier perhaps, but not coercion. Paying taxes is one of the requirements of living in civil society. Paying taxes is also a benefit because it means I have more than I need.
Take a look at the world around you sometime. Most of the people on this planet try to exist on less that $5 per day. Instead of bitching about what you could have, or want next, be grateful for what you have already got.
Vote (or don't vote) as you please, it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. But do try and get a sense of perspective.
And how do you suppose we FORCE people to choose a more simplified lifestyle? Trust me, people are greedy and aren't going to do so by choice. You can provide tax incentives, but you simply aren't going to be able to say, HEY YOU! stop consuming. Its just not going to happen.
There will not be any coercion. The solution is to use taxation to encourage / discourage behaviour. If governments slap a huge surtax on gas-guzzling SUVs, raise the gas tax and offer tax credits for fuel-efficient diesels or hybrids, nobody is prevented from purchasing the car they want. People will pay the true cost of their purchase though.
It's not like Gore is proposing to tear down the cities and require that we all become subsistence farmers. We do have to stop equating happiness with more possessions. Having more stuff does not make you a better person, and it's sad that so many people seem to think that way.
IMHO the only thing Commodore gave to the industry was a bunch of kids who's parents could only afford a Commodore Vic or 64 and could progam assembly and squeze perfromance from a wickedly slow disk drive. There's nothing innovative about their hardware or software.
WTF?
Based on that line of reasoning, Henry Ford didn't contribute much to the auto industry either because he just made cars that the average person could afford, even though they were slow and rickety.
I don't know about you, but I grew up in that era, and there wasn't much else to choose from at the time. Making computers affordable and available to a wide variety of people was an amazing accomplishment for Commodore. The personal computer industry owes them a debt of gratitude.
t doesn't matter if anyone else agrees with a group's beliefs: those beliefs will still have positive and negative consequences. When those consequences are forseeable to the actors, we can issue moral judgments about their choices... but still, it doesn't matter what our judgments are, not in any primary way.
It doesn't matter?
I am not sure if you are being a relativist, or a nihilist now...
Consider this. You are alone on a desert island. There are no humans for 1000 miles, and none are ever going to show up. You will live out your life alone. What, then, is morality?
The same as it ever was. Just because you are alone, you are still a moral agent.
I have been speaking of morality as the system of choosing actions based on one's rational understanding of long-term future consequences upon one's goals. Morality, therefore, is at its strongest when one is alone, when there are no others around to rescue a person from his errors.
At the very best, you are a advocating a form of utilitarianism, with all of the criticisms that utility faces. At worst, you are trying to justify sollipsism. I do not believe you will be able to make a virtue out of being selfish.
It has to be, because values are still required when alone on a desert island. Rightness is still necessary, because otherwise you'll die.
We all die eventually, but I fail to see how this hermit needs some moral code to survive utterly alone. Morality tends to involve our actions and behaviour towards other people...
* Mortal creatures can die, and so they require values in order to continue living.
No, they don't. They have primary needs like food and shelter. Navel gazing comes later after your primary needs are met.
* Rightness consists in selecting the choices which, according to knowledge on-hand, have the best expected value yield.
Fine, but what does that have to do with morality?
It's all well and good to equate morality with self-interest but your arguments are pretty weak. By your argument, there can be no commmon or shared morality because we are all busy pursuing our own self-interest. Indeed, common virtues would be immoral, because that would be putting someone else's benefit before our own. How then can you justify civil society? If you had absolute power (and presumably absolute morality according to your theory) you could be a free moral agent working towards your own goals. But if you were anything less, there would be limitations that would prevent you from being happy. Taken to the extreme, is this a recipe for anarchy.
Rightness is selecting the choice that is rationally expected to maximize goodness (i.e. maximize values).
Oh, so you are a utilitarian then.
Not that every world religion and every Socialist system hasn't tried to think of an irreducible reason why the self should regard non-self as more important.
What does socialism (an economic theory) have to do with morality? Looking at the world around me today, I would do well to ask what religion has to do with morality too.
That is where profit enters the picture. Morality is completely about profit, in the sense that morality is about maximizing the value (the goodness) generated by our actions. And this holds true no matter what standard of value (self or non-self) you choose: whomever you serve, morality tells you how to most profitably obtain values toward that end.
I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. If I have an itch and I scratch myself and in the process make myself feel better, I have (according to your theory) committed a posative moral act? Presumably masturbation is the pinnacle of morality under such a philosophy...
At least you have the courage to admit that other people are merely a means to an end, but that is a very unpleasant theory. Your theory seems best suited to psychopathic personalities who honestly don't care about how their actions affect others.
If you think today's science is devoid of politics I think you need to chat with more folks who have tried to find funding for their research, tried to get it published, etc.
Nothing is devoid of politics these days, and I suspect that has always been the case. That said however, I don't think there is anywhere near as much political interference as you imply. I mean, Phillipe Rushton still gets published even though his theories are repugnant and his research has been repeatedly discredited...
If you vote Democrat you are NOT going to like it unless of course you want us to cut and run in Iraq (and let another Saddam come to power..or worse), ignore the NK threat, pay higher taxes (1st thing Dems will do is repeal the Bush tax cuts, especially the child tax credit), see Wall Street go DOWN, increase the chance for another 9/11, see all progress on illegal immigration stop (they want illegals..another class to keep down with handouts from the Democrats..the second chance at the Great Society ideal that has not worked for 40 yrs). Bite your tounge on such a minor disagreement and go vote for the RIGHT candidate.
You forgot to mention that every time someone votes against a Republican, God kills a kitten AND a puppy.
Galileo and Darwin were individuals who were initially ridiculed by the most qualified men who were in agreement.
Of course, there were so many reputable peer-reviewed journals in those days which allowed for significant public discourse to affirm/deny those theories. Additionally the "most qualified men" were all fully tenured, which gave them the protection to advocate controversial theories. Mind you, there was not much to worry as there was such a clear separation between church and state at the time...
That is indeed the case today; power is the ability to do as one pleases.
I think that has always been the case...
Morality, however, is inescapable, in the sense that actions have consequences upon our values. Those consequences will occur whether or not we have recognized an objective standard or authority.
I suppose that all depends on what you consider to be "moral" and what your values are. Additionally, if you have any sort of moral code, you have objectified what is moral and what is not.
What I was getting at was more along the lines that unless everybody accepts the same moral and ethical standards, any justification for invading another nation will be quite relative. Just because one group believes it is the correct thing to do does not imply that anyone else will agree.
Morality is about how an action will affect our values in the future. It doesn't require an authority, a judgment, or even a consensus.
I do not believe your definition of morality would be widely accepted or understood. It is certainly not the definition I was using.
By any definition I am familiar with, morality requires a degree of authority, judgement and consensus. Your definition of morality appears to be highly relative.
I suggest that you aren't seeing this yet because you said "anything goes" if there are no objective standards. Can I eat rocks if nobody has identified my body's nutritional requirements?
And I stand by that statement. If there are no objective standards of morality, then all actions are morally equivalent. Your counter-example has nothing to do with morality, and I am not sure what you are trying to demonstrate with it.
But why do you mention 'ethics' separately from 'morality'? Is there more than one ultimate standard of value that we should hold ourselves to?
I mention them separately because I think they are different, but not independent concepts. A very simplistic explanation is that ethics is the categorization of good versus bad, whereas morality is the categorization of right versus wrong. There is a certain amount of overlap between the two, but they are different - at least to me.
I understand that some of the beneficiaries might eventually become profitable trading partners (e.g. Japan after WWII)... but your moral pronouncement doesn't mention such payback.
When did morality ever concern itself with what was profitable? Unless of course you are a Ferengi and are applying the Rules of Acquisition...
If I read you correctly, you posit an obligation to rescue whomever from whatever, even at no forseeable profit to self. What is the basis of this obligation?
By virtue of being human myself. I think the fundamental nature of human society is found in the way that we treat our most vulnerable members. If you have more than you need, share it with someone who does not have enough. If you do well, do good.
Now, do any of us (myself included) live up to that ideal? No. Only a very few outstanding individuals live their lives in such an other-regarding manner.
Are the rest of hypocrites? Yes. None of us do all that we could to help others who are in dire need of assistance. Yet we would all agree that we ourselves are deserving of aid should we need it.
If you think that is too utopian, there is an element of self-interest: it is in my (and everyone else's) best interests to behave in this manner. After all, I might require assistance some day too. By helping all people to realize their full potential, our society would be much more pleasant and much less violent, to the benefit of us all.
Is birth in a decent society the neuveau Original Sin, for which we owe penance?
Is birth in a society where life is nasty, brutal and short a well-deserved pun
It doesn't need to be answered in order for morality to operate.
Actions have consequences, even if no final authority exists to deliver a verdict upon them. I am asking you to assess the consequences of a "beneficient invasion".
But if there are no objective standards as to what constitutes "broken", then pretty much anything goes, provided that you have sufficient power to do as you please. Are you suggesting that the ends justify the means?
Beneficence has often been used to justify colonialism and imperialism in the past. When such an argument is made, one would do well to ask "beneficial" to whom?
Whether or not that is the case, does not change the fact that every action has a moral standing. By "moral standing" I mean that every action (and every inaction) has consequences that affect the actor's values.
I think you are over-stating things. How does crossing the street simply because I would like to get to the other side affect my moral standing versus not crossing the street?
Clearly some actions have moral and ethical consequences, but not all do.
If it doesn't affect us, then why should we expend resources and risk our lives to rescue it?
Because those affected are people like ourselves, and we have obligations to them - regardless of profitability or geopolitical influence.
It is only an accident of birth that any of us were born where we were. We in the West have already won the only lottery that matters, and we should help those less fortunate than ourselves.
The primary point I am trying to make is that any free society has the right to violently liberate Darfur, because the Darfur culture has no objective justification.
I think you are getting lost in semantics.
Being able to do something is clearly different from having the right to do something. There are several nations that would be able to overthrown the Sudanese government. It is another matter to suggest that any have the right to do so.
I do not know what you mean with regard to the Dafur culture having no objective justification. What is taking place there is terrible, but there are reasons why those events are happening.
Yet... and this is the secondary point... the right to liberate Darfur is not automatically the obligation to liberate Darfur.
It is unclear to me what right exists to invade another nation. I would agree that having the power to do something is not an obligation to do so. Otherwise might==right, and that principle has severe implications.
The needs of the Darfurians are not a claim against our own safety and comfort. Indeed, insofar as Darfur is simultaneously perilous and unrewarding, our inaction is moral -- even though action is morally justified.
You are trying to have your cake and eat it too by claiming that both intervention and non-intervention in a genocide is morally justified
If morality is a binary operator, this is a contradiction, and your argument falls to pieces. If morality is a continuum (as I believe it is), then you need to quantify which of the two (and surely there are other alternatives) is more or less good. Intervention and non-intervention are not going to be morally equivalent.
Finally, I would suggest that a moral/ethical question at a personal level does not scale up to a national or international level. I suspect that the reverse is also true.
What if the target culture is completely broken? What if it is a fenced-in hellhole, woefully unfit for human survival? And what if it is caught in a social pattern (e.g. North Korea under Kim) that is so strong it can't break loose from within?
Who has the right to say whether a target culture is broken? Assuming that point can be adequately answered, is being broken enough?
IMHO, nations invade other nations if and only if it is their best interests to do so. Ethics and morality play no part in the decision making calculus.
Take Dafur for example. I think we can all agree that Dafur qualifies as being unfit for human survival, and has been for a few years now. Yet we in the West are/have been totally apathetic about the tragedy that has been unfolding there.
Why?
Because it doesn't affect us, and we have no vested interest in anything that happens there. Same thing with Rwanda a few years before.
Our inaction is utterly shameful.
Our leaders have decided that the Sudan has no economic or geo-political value. Hence, the lives of the people who live there are similarly without value, and we are quite content to let them die.
The multiple genocides in Bosnia were ignored until it became embarrassing that such atrocities could happen in the heart of Europe that the Western powers finally made a token effort, but it was too little, too late.
We do have an interest in Afghanistan (because we were attacked by a private militia that set up camp there) and in Iraq because they have the largest undeveloped oil deposits in the world.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, we in the West really didn't care about anything that was happening in Afghanistan. We had the occasional news story of them blowing up an ancient statue of Buddha, and heard that they had banned girls from schools, but our interest was brief and transient.
Prior to the Gulf War II, we didn't really care what happened in Iraq either. Saddam Hussein was a convenient bogeyman, but there was no interest in what the life of the average Iraqi citizen was.
Both nations were invaded because of self-interest. Afghanistan, because we wanted the villains in Al Queda, and Iraq because we wanted control of their oil.
Ethically, I do not believe there is any way to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, AND justify our inaction with regard to Dafur.
But then again, ethics has nothing to do with foreign policy.
Being periodically less than perfect in your pursuit of an objectively good body of ideals is not the same as being shrill, tantrum-having dictator in pursuit of an objectively evil agenda.
Choosing the lesser of two (or more) evils is still choosing evil.
Simply claiming that our intentions are potentially quantifiably better than someone else's is not a license to act without regard for consequences. Any claim to the contrary (regardless of circumstance) is an argument that the ends justify the means. From a moral perspective, I do not think that you would want to try and support that.
I can understand why you would question the ability and competance of the spoiled son of a former leader though;)
Ah, well. I can see that you'd much rather we offer our diplomatic support to someone who doesn't think the Taliban's methods are such a bad way to run a country or your daughter's marriage.
The Taliban (under Musharraf's watch) were Pakistan's only foreign policy success. Pakistan bankrolled and openly supported the Taliban until Colin Powell threatened to bomb his nation back to the stone age. Even now, he keeps 500K troops on the border with Kasmir in a pissing contest with India, but he hasn't got the troops to monitor Afghan boarder. As a result, the Taliban and Al Queda can freely travel between the two nations...
Please get your facts straight. Musharraf is an ally of convenience who has shown no signs of stepping down and allowing free and democratic elections, even though he has promised to do so multiple times.
It's all about the fact that we want to, for example, use things like nuke-powered spacecraft, and we're not going to allow someone else (China? doesn't matter) to dictate or act in a way contrary to that. How is "trouble for the entire world" to say that?
Have you ever heard of a little something called imperialism? How can it be OK for the US claim one set of rights, and subsequently deny everyone else those rights?
Do as we say, and not as we do? And the justification for this dichotomy is that we have the biggest military, so we call the shots?
I suspect that if $ENEMY made the same claim, you would be outraged.
Sure it does. Why, other than while suffering from an acute case of moral relativity, should we consider it good to allow a country like Iran, that speaks in terms of wiping out other countries, to develop nukes? Why is it morally reasonable to support a country like North Korea, which runs a hideously repressive, retro-grade regime funded by illicit traffic in counterfeit foreign currency, drug trafficking, and weapons sales to places like Iran, in their pursuit of deployable nukes?
Let he who has no sin cast the first stone...
In order to claim the moral high ground, you actually have to occupy the moral high ground. Otherwise you open yourself open to charges of hypocracy for holding others to a standard of behaviour that you yourself do not try to meet.
If you can't see the very real, objective, philosophical shortcomings of regimes like those, then you are in no position to opine on morality in the first place.
You see, this is where the charges of hypocracy come into play. It's not like your own government is a paragon of virtue. What right do you have to criticize Iran when your own government invaded a sovereign nation simply because it wanted to. How can you criticize North Korea when your leader has just authorized torture, kangaroo courts, and indefinite imprisonment of prisoners without being charged with any crime?
No, I am not suggesting that the US is morally equivalent to Iran or North Korea, but you are the one who argued in favour of absolute morality...
In times of peace(We need more) then lets things happen,
Do you think that needlessly provocative policies like this one are going to bring about more peace, or are you only interested in Pax Americana?
but have the ability and presence that when war breaks, we can be assured our use of space and its technology it offers. Likewise, we want to make sure those opposing us cannot have those same things if we can.
If another nation claims the same right, would you be cool with that?
If not, I would like to know why.
It is more likely this policy is just a dicksize thing, but the potential is there for an entirely pointless arms race, unless of course you happen to be a shareholder of one of the defense contractors about to pig out at the government trough...
Sure being the top dog brings us unwanted hatred from others, but such is life. I would rather be the hated than the hater.
Is it possible that the policies your government implements (in your name BTW) could have something to do with inciting that hatred you speak of?
If they are smart enough to figure out how to get around all the blocks that get put in their way, they should be smart enough to understand the dangers
Your example provides a good illustration that intelligence != wisdom.
but it relies on the fallacies that children/teens do not have adequate coping mechanisms and/or are better off in ignorance.
I wouldn't say that children are better off in ignorance, but you need to make sure that the information they receive is appropriate and age-specific. As for their coping mechanisms, I cannot agree with you. Yes, children are more adaptable than older people, but that does not stretch as far as you imply. Coping implies wisdom and experience, and youth typically do not have either in sufficient quantity. That's not a critique of young people, it is a function of their age.
Children and adolescents simply do not have the judgement skills that are necessary to respond to all situations. They are not adults in a smaller format, and any claims to the contrary are at best wishful thinking.
I think the best solution is to make sure the computer is located centrally in the home so that internet activity can be viewed by anyone present. When they get older, they could earn the privilege of having a computer in their own room.
Until kids mature to the point that they can make informed decisions on their own and accept the consequences for those decisions, it is the responsibility of adults to set and enforce boundaries. In doing so, we (hopefully) provide them with a safe and healthy environment in which to grow.
It is out job to act as adults, and their job to act as children. They have excuses for their mis-behaviour, we don't.
Legal obligation? So I fly over to Kabul to rape and murder some chick and then escape back to the US should I escape justice just because there's no piece of paper between two countries?
Sadly, yes. For this reason, most nations have reciprocal extradition treaties in place to prevent that sort of thing from happening. That is why white-collar criminals flee to South American countries, from which they cannot be forcibly extradited.
Of course, extradition can be mis-used as well. Some authoritarian states have been known to accuse dissidents living abroad of some trumped-up charges and request that they be returned to face those charges.
And what legal obligation did we have to let Bin Ladin get away with it? Nation-states will take whatever measures they deem to be in their own best interest. You don't get to slaughter 3,000 citizens of a country and have it go unanswered.
Yes, but that is a separate issue. Laws != justice. Lawyers argue the letter of the law regardless of what their client has done, and it is up to the judges to decide what justice requires under the circumstances.
The Taliban was not legally obligated to hand over Bin Laden in the absence of an extradition treaty, and that is all I wanted to point out.
Whether that was a moral or just decision on their part is an entirely different matter.
As for allowing the deaths of so many to go unpunished, that may well happen if he is not captured alive. Justice is not so arranged that everyone gets what they deserve.
Make no mistake: Any other country would have gone after them too. Do you forget the fact that every single nation in the world (besides Iraq and the PLO) condemned the attacks of 9/11?
Actually, I don't believe that any other country would have overthrown the Taliban. Most simply do not have the military might to do so, even if they had the intent. I would like to think that a few others would have the wisdom not to.
Yes, bin Laden is a criminal and yes he should face justice for his crimes. I am not certain that starting a couple of wars was the correct, or appropriate response. Honestly, it does not seem to have done much for anyone except the defense contractors and Haliburton so far...
I'll worry about the Mullah's when they have a delivery system that can reach the United States and overpower our missile defenses. Do you really advocate them trying to adopt a MAD posture vs the US? We bankrupted the Soviet Union when they tried that. I think we'll be able to handle Iran.
I think you missed my point. The prospect of destruction makes just about everyone grow up fast. I think the Mullahs want to have nuclear weapons, but they don't intend to use them. Nukes are more of an insurance policy to ensure that they will not be invaded like the Iraqis were.
As for being able to handle Iran, that is unlikely. The US military cannot handle Iraq which was (on paper) a much easier target. With no formal diplomatic relationships and lots of angry rhetoric on both sides, I think you will find the solution (whatever that ends up being) will come from the EU and Russia.
I merely pointed out that when one attacks a nuclear state one is putting oneself at risk of nuclear retaliation. They might want to think about that before they murder innocent American/Russian/British civilians.
Like how nuclear weapons spared the Russians from terror attacks from the Chechens? That must be why why the IRA never attacked the British! Or perhaps you meant how the Basques were unwilling to attack the French for fear of a nuclear reprisal? Best of all, how the Arabs have left Israel alone because they have nuclear weapons to protect themselves?
Oh yes, nuclear weapons have been the ultimate deterrent against terror attacks.
(BTW - the Taliban never killed any Americans. Bin Laden and his associates were Saudis.)
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You had the same amount of choice about the family you were born into as anyone else did: zero. You or I do not deserve the life we were born into any more than someone in the third world deserves the life they were born into.
I'm not saying you should feel guilty for the life you have - you shouldn't. However, you should be grateful. We in the West have already won the only lottery that matters. We have so much, and yet many of us take if completely for granted, or worse - develop a sense of entitlement.
As with all problems in this planet, most people (including myself) are too stupid, lazy and/or greedy to do anything about it...
Most corporations are completely amoral. A select few are arguably evil. They are all in a desperate search for short-term profits to the exclusion of all else. If they ever paid their staff more, it was a matter of necessity not choice.
If you examine corporate behaviour in the economic incentive zones in South-East Asia, it is clear that any statements you might hear about corporate responsibility and ethical behaviour are just bullshit PR.
I would recommend Naomi Klein's book No Logo for a better picture of how we are treating people who have few other options other than starving.
And rather than give it to them, we spend resources to search out other people to exploit. That's the problem. Fine, let capital go where it wants, but make sure that labour and environmental standards go with it. If that were the case, we would not be open to charges of exploitation.
As it is, we give illiterate peasants the choice to starve, or work for starvation wages in sweatshops. If the workers complain and try to improve their lot, we shut down the sweatshops and move them somewhere else.
I can see how it works to the advantage of the executives who run the corporations that exploit their workers, and I can see how it works to the advantage of Western consumers, but I don't see how it works for the advantage of the oppressed people at the bottom.
Exploitation by any other name...
The only difference is that we benefit from it at the moment...
If Western corporations paid living wages to the staff in South-East Asia, you would have a point. However, your argument fails apart because it's hardly voluntary. We give them a choice between starvation or industrial-revolution-era working conditions paying subsistence wages. If they try to organize and demand better wages and/or working conditions, the factories close down and relocate to other "economic incentive zones" that have policies more favourable to the sweatshop owners.
So, we barely give them enough to survive, and if they try to make a better living for themselves, we abandon them.
How is that noble? Furthermore, when you take into account that the workers in the West who used to do the same jobs made exponentially more than the present workers are making, it becomes obvious that the corporations could easily afford to pay living wages to their sweatshop serfs and still save a bundle.
Greed is the only reason I can think of that explains why they wouldn't.
The existence of cartels and excessive profiteering pretty much disproves the notion that there is a free market out there. Even so, the reason Western economies have done so well in due to the purchasing power of the middle class. Serfs in present day sweatshops (who typically earn less than $2/day) cannot afford to purchase the products they manufacture. As such, they are unable to participate in this "free market" in any significant capacity.
Classic economic theory does not require that the working class be oppressed. In fact, the whole point of neo-conservative economics is that the benefits initially enjoyed by the wealthy class are supposed to trickle down to the masses at some point. It is hard to justify oppression and exploitation on the grounds that they might starve to death otherwise.
That's not the point. The workers there are paid a fraction of what people were being paid here to do the same job. Western corporations could pay those people a living wage and still save a bundle - but they choose to pay starvation wages instead. But that isn't good enough, those corporations are always on the lookout for economic incentive zones that offer lower wages and fewer environmental restrictions.
So, instead of letting the people starve, we give them industrial revolution-era working conditions and subsistence wages, and congratulate ourselves for giving them a hand up?
It's a disgrace!
Dude, that is a seriously lame example. There are many things that differentiate China from North Korea that might have something to do with their relative economic power - area, population size, abundance of natural resources, etc.
If you honestly think their economic policies are the only differentiator, you need to read more.
This is the biggest problem I have with globalization: we have removed all constraints from capital and freed it from all other considerations. It is truly a race to the bottom - who has the lowest labour costs, who has the fewest environmental restrictions "wins" some starvation wage jobs until we can find someone else who can be exploited even more.
The fear used to be that jobs were being sent south to Mexico. But when Mexicans workers start demanding fair wages, we sent the work to Viet Nam, where people earn $2 per day. But even that looks pretty expensive when there are people in China willing to work for $.50 a day.
It's exploitation plain and simple, and we don't care because we are insulated from the uglier aspects of it. Of course, we are getting screwed too - those over-priced sneakers are now manufactured for a fraction of what they used to cost, but we still pay roughly the same price at retail. At least the shareholders are happy, but if they could find someone who would work for $.25 a day, they would be even happier.
Whenever someone argues in favour of a living wage, we are told it is too expensive. What a shame that poverty has become an official requirement of our economic system.
If we found ourselves working in the sweatshops for less than a buck a day, I wonder if we would be grateful...
No, I'm not. A barrier perhaps, but not coercion. Paying taxes is one of the requirements of living in civil society. Paying taxes is also a benefit because it means I have more than I need.
Take a look at the world around you sometime. Most of the people on this planet try to exist on less that $5 per day. Instead of bitching about what you could have, or want next, be grateful for what you have already got.
Vote (or don't vote) as you please, it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. But do try and get a sense of perspective.
There will not be any coercion. The solution is to use taxation to encourage / discourage behaviour. If governments slap a huge surtax on gas-guzzling SUVs, raise the gas tax and offer tax credits for fuel-efficient diesels or hybrids, nobody is prevented from purchasing the car they want. People will pay the true cost of their purchase though.
It's not like Gore is proposing to tear down the cities and require that we all become subsistence farmers. We do have to stop equating happiness with more possessions. Having more stuff does not make you a better person, and it's sad that so many people seem to think that way.
WTF?
Based on that line of reasoning, Henry Ford didn't contribute much to the auto industry either because he just made cars that the average person could afford, even though they were slow and rickety.
I don't know about you, but I grew up in that era, and there wasn't much else to choose from at the time. Making computers affordable and available to a wide variety of people was an amazing accomplishment for Commodore. The personal computer industry owes them a debt of gratitude.
What would you consider innovative anyhow?
It doesn't matter?
I am not sure if you are being a relativist, or a nihilist now...
The same as it ever was. Just because you are alone, you are still a moral agent.
At the very best, you are a advocating a form of utilitarianism, with all of the criticisms that utility faces. At worst, you are trying to justify sollipsism. I do not believe you will be able to make a virtue out of being selfish.
We all die eventually, but I fail to see how this hermit needs some moral code to survive utterly alone. Morality tends to involve our actions and behaviour towards other people...
No, they don't. They have primary needs like food and shelter. Navel gazing comes later after your primary needs are met.
Fine, but what does that have to do with morality?It's all well and good to equate morality with self-interest but your arguments are pretty weak. By your argument, there can be no commmon or shared morality because we are all busy pursuing our own self-interest. Indeed, common virtues would be immoral, because that would be putting someone else's benefit before our own. How then can you justify civil society? If you had absolute power (and presumably absolute morality according to your theory) you could be a free moral agent working towards your own goals. But if you were anything less, there would be limitations that would prevent you from being happy. Taken to the extreme, is this a recipe for anarchy.
Oh, so you are a utilitarian then.
What does socialism (an economic theory) have to do with morality? Looking at the world around me today, I would do well to ask what religion has to do with morality too.
I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. If I have an itch and I scratch myself and in the process make myself feel better, I have (according to your theory) committed a posative moral act? Presumably masturbation is the pinnacle of morality under such a philosophy...
At least you have the courage to admit that other people are merely a means to an end, but that is a very unpleasant theory. Your theory seems best suited to psychopathic personalities who honestly don't care about how their actions affect others.
Nothing is devoid of politics these days, and I suspect that has always been the case. That said however, I don't think there is anywhere near as much political interference as you imply. I mean, Phillipe Rushton still gets published even though his theories are repugnant and his research has been repeatedly discredited...
You forgot to mention that every time someone votes against a Republican, God kills a kitten AND a puppy.
Of course, there were so many reputable peer-reviewed journals in those days which allowed for significant public discourse to affirm/deny those theories. Additionally the "most qualified men" were all fully tenured, which gave them the protection to advocate controversial theories. Mind you, there was not much to worry as there was such a clear separation between church and state at the time...
Oh wait...Thanks for the offer, but I live in Toronto.
I think that has always been the case...
I suppose that all depends on what you consider to be "moral" and what your values are. Additionally, if you have any sort of moral code, you have objectified what is moral and what is not.
What I was getting at was more along the lines that unless everybody accepts the same moral and ethical standards, any justification for invading another nation will be quite relative. Just because one group believes it is the correct thing to do does not imply that anyone else will agree.
I do not believe your definition of morality would be widely accepted or understood. It is certainly not the definition I was using.
By any definition I am familiar with, morality requires a degree of authority, judgement and consensus. Your definition of morality appears to be highly relative.
And I stand by that statement. If there are no objective standards of morality, then all actions are morally equivalent. Your counter-example has nothing to do with morality, and I am not sure what you are trying to demonstrate with it.
I mention them separately because I think they are different, but not independent concepts. A very simplistic explanation is that ethics is the categorization of good versus bad, whereas morality is the categorization of right versus wrong. There is a certain amount of overlap between the two, but they are different - at least to me.
When did morality ever concern itself with what was profitable? Unless of course you are a Ferengi and are applying the Rules of Acquisition...
By virtue of being human myself. I think the fundamental nature of human society is found in the way that we treat our most vulnerable members. If you have more than you need, share it with someone who does not have enough. If you do well, do good.
Now, do any of us (myself included) live up to that ideal? No. Only a very few outstanding individuals live their lives in such an other-regarding manner.
Are the rest of hypocrites? Yes. None of us do all that we could to help others who are in dire need of assistance. Yet we would all agree that we ourselves are deserving of aid should we need it.
If you think that is too utopian, there is an element of self-interest: it is in my (and everyone else's) best interests to behave in this manner. After all, I might require assistance some day too. By helping all people to realize their full potential, our society would be much more pleasant and much less violent, to the benefit of us all.
Is birth in a society where life is nasty, brutal and short a well-deserved pun
But if there are no objective standards as to what constitutes "broken", then pretty much anything goes, provided that you have sufficient power to do as you please. Are you suggesting that the ends justify the means?
Beneficence has often been used to justify colonialism and imperialism in the past. When such an argument is made, one would do well to ask "beneficial" to whom?
I think you are over-stating things. How does crossing the street simply because I would like to get to the other side affect my moral standing versus not crossing the street?
Clearly some actions have moral and ethical consequences, but not all do.
Because those affected are people like ourselves, and we have obligations to them - regardless of profitability or geopolitical influence.
It is only an accident of birth that any of us were born where we were. We in the West have already won the only lottery that matters, and we should help those less fortunate than ourselves.
I think you are getting lost in semantics.
Being able to do something is clearly different from having the right to do something. There are several nations that would be able to overthrown the Sudanese government. It is another matter to suggest that any have the right to do so.
I do not know what you mean with regard to the Dafur culture having no objective justification. What is taking place there is terrible, but there are reasons why those events are happening.
It is unclear to me what right exists to invade another nation. I would agree that having the power to do something is not an obligation to do so. Otherwise might==right, and that principle has severe implications.
You are trying to have your cake and eat it too by claiming that both intervention and non-intervention in a genocide is morally justified
If morality is a binary operator, this is a contradiction, and your argument falls to pieces. If morality is a continuum (as I believe it is), then you need to quantify which of the two (and surely there are other alternatives) is more or less good. Intervention and non-intervention are not going to be morally equivalent.
Finally, I would suggest that a moral/ethical question at a personal level does not scale up to a national or international level. I suspect that the reverse is also true.
Who has the right to say whether a target culture is broken? Assuming that point can be adequately answered, is being broken enough?
IMHO, nations invade other nations if and only if it is their best interests to do so. Ethics and morality play no part in the decision making calculus.
Take Dafur for example. I think we can all agree that Dafur qualifies as being unfit for human survival, and has been for a few years now. Yet we in the West are/have been totally apathetic about the tragedy that has been unfolding there.
Why?
Because it doesn't affect us, and we have no vested interest in anything that happens there. Same thing with Rwanda a few years before.
Our inaction is utterly shameful.
Our leaders have decided that the Sudan has no economic or geo-political value. Hence, the lives of the people who live there are similarly without value, and we are quite content to let them die.
The multiple genocides in Bosnia were ignored until it became embarrassing that such atrocities could happen in the heart of Europe that the Western powers finally made a token effort, but it was too little, too late.
We do have an interest in Afghanistan (because we were attacked by a private militia that set up camp there) and in Iraq because they have the largest undeveloped oil deposits in the world.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, we in the West really didn't care about anything that was happening in Afghanistan. We had the occasional news story of them blowing up an ancient statue of Buddha, and heard that they had banned girls from schools, but our interest was brief and transient.
Prior to the Gulf War II, we didn't really care what happened in Iraq either. Saddam Hussein was a convenient bogeyman, but there was no interest in what the life of the average Iraqi citizen was.
Both nations were invaded because of self-interest. Afghanistan, because we wanted the villains in Al Queda, and Iraq because we wanted control of their oil.
Ethically, I do not believe there is any way to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, AND justify our inaction with regard to Dafur.
But then again, ethics has nothing to do with foreign policy.
Choosing the lesser of two (or more) evils is still choosing evil.
Simply claiming that our intentions are potentially quantifiably better than someone else's is not a license to act without regard for consequences. Any claim to the contrary (regardless of circumstance) is an argument that the ends justify the means. From a moral perspective, I do not think that you would want to try and support that.
I can understand why you would question the ability and competance of the spoiled son of a former leader though ;)
The Taliban (under Musharraf's watch) were Pakistan's only foreign policy success. Pakistan bankrolled and openly supported the Taliban until Colin Powell threatened to bomb his nation back to the stone age. Even now, he keeps 500K troops on the border with Kasmir in a pissing contest with India, but he hasn't got the troops to monitor Afghan boarder. As a result, the Taliban and Al Queda can freely travel between the two nations...
Please get your facts straight. Musharraf is an ally of convenience who has shown no signs of stepping down and allowing free and democratic elections, even though he has promised to do so multiple times.
Have you ever heard of a little something called imperialism? How can it be OK for the US claim one set of rights, and subsequently deny everyone else those rights?
Do as we say, and not as we do? And the justification for this dichotomy is that we have the biggest military, so we call the shots?
I suspect that if $ENEMY made the same claim, you would be outraged.
Let he who has no sin cast the first stone...
In order to claim the moral high ground, you actually have to occupy the moral high ground. Otherwise you open yourself open to charges of hypocracy for holding others to a standard of behaviour that you yourself do not try to meet.
You see, this is where the charges of hypocracy come into play. It's not like your own government is a paragon of virtue. What right do you have to criticize Iran when your own government invaded a sovereign nation simply because it wanted to. How can you criticize North Korea when your leader has just authorized torture, kangaroo courts, and indefinite imprisonment of prisoners without being charged with any crime?
No, I am not suggesting that the US is morally equivalent to Iran or North Korea, but you are the one who argued in favour of absolute morality...
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity...
Do you think that needlessly provocative policies like this one are going to bring about more peace, or are you only interested in Pax Americana?
If another nation claims the same right, would you be cool with that?
If not, I would like to know why.
It is more likely this policy is just a dicksize thing, but the potential is there for an entirely pointless arms race, unless of course you happen to be a shareholder of one of the defense contractors about to pig out at the government trough...
Is it possible that the policies your government implements (in your name BTW) could have something to do with inciting that hatred you speak of?
Your example provides a good illustration that intelligence != wisdom.
I can only assume that you are not a parent...
I wouldn't say that children are better off in ignorance, but you need to make sure that the information they receive is appropriate and age-specific. As for their coping mechanisms, I cannot agree with you. Yes, children are more adaptable than older people, but that does not stretch as far as you imply. Coping implies wisdom and experience, and youth typically do not have either in sufficient quantity. That's not a critique of young people, it is a function of their age.
Children and adolescents simply do not have the judgement skills that are necessary to respond to all situations. They are not adults in a smaller format, and any claims to the contrary are at best wishful thinking.
I think the best solution is to make sure the computer is located centrally in the home so that internet activity can be viewed by anyone present. When they get older, they could earn the privilege of having a computer in their own room.
Until kids mature to the point that they can make informed decisions on their own and accept the consequences for those decisions, it is the responsibility of adults to set and enforce boundaries. In doing so, we (hopefully) provide them with a safe and healthy environment in which to grow.
It is out job to act as adults, and their job to act as children. They have excuses for their mis-behaviour, we don't.
Sadly, yes. For this reason, most nations have reciprocal extradition treaties in place to prevent that sort of thing from happening. That is why white-collar criminals flee to South American countries, from which they cannot be forcibly extradited.
Of course, extradition can be mis-used as well. Some authoritarian states have been known to accuse dissidents living abroad of some trumped-up charges and request that they be returned to face those charges.
Yes, but that is a separate issue. Laws != justice. Lawyers argue the letter of the law regardless of what their client has done, and it is up to the judges to decide what justice requires under the circumstances.
The Taliban was not legally obligated to hand over Bin Laden in the absence of an extradition treaty, and that is all I wanted to point out.
Whether that was a moral or just decision on their part is an entirely different matter.
As for allowing the deaths of so many to go unpunished, that may well happen if he is not captured alive. Justice is not so arranged that everyone gets what they deserve.
Actually, I don't believe that any other country would have overthrown the Taliban. Most simply do not have the military might to do so, even if they had the intent. I would like to think that a few others would have the wisdom not to.
Yes, bin Laden is a criminal and yes he should face justice for his crimes. I am not certain that starting a couple of wars was the correct, or appropriate response. Honestly, it does not seem to have done much for anyone except the defense contractors and Haliburton so far...
I think you missed my point. The prospect of destruction makes just about everyone grow up fast. I think the Mullahs want to have nuclear weapons, but they don't intend to use them. Nukes are more of an insurance policy to ensure that they will not be invaded like the Iraqis were.
As for being able to handle Iran, that is unlikely. The US military cannot handle Iraq which was (on paper) a much easier target. With no formal diplomatic relationships and lots of angry rhetoric on both sides, I think you will find the solution (whatever that ends up being) will come from the EU and Russia.
Like how nuclear weapons spared the Russians from terror attacks from the Chechens? That must be why why the IRA never attacked the British! Or perhaps you meant how the Basques were unwilling to attack the French for fear of a nuclear reprisal? Best of all, how the Arabs have left Israel alone because they have nuclear weapons to protect themselves?
Oh yes, nuclear weapons have been the ultimate deterrent against terror attacks.
(BTW - the Taliban never killed any Americans. Bin Laden and his associates were Saudis.)