Suggested Fundamental Laws

[Rissen]

I thought some of you might be interested to read 3 fundemental laws (Or as the Muslims descrbe them, 'pillars') which I believe to accurately sum up my (and, indeed, many other people's) beliefs about how a society should be. Please note these would only be feasible in a society which allows for independant thought.

1. No law shall be passed which denies an individual (or group of consenting individuals) of sane mind and appropriate age the right to do what they wish to themselves.

2. No law-abiding individual should be allowed to suffer against his or her will, unless in doing so a greater number of law-abiding individuals will be freed from suffering.

3. No unelected individual should ever have control over important industries or governmental posts.


Of course in a real society there would be a large amount of mostly little amendments which cover situations etc, however there is no point in me going into this now...

If I have made a mistake please correct me, I am not infallible and correction is a large part of progress. Also, if you do not understand please ask, I have difficulty in perceiving the amount that other people understand, and often believe people are smarter than they actually are.

[Seeker]

I'd like an example of #2 please :)

[Bannockburn]

number 2 is Mill's On liberty. in the west at least.

[Decolonize The Left]

Sorry, I have a really quick off-topic question.

I noticed all of you, Bannock, Seeker, and Rissen, are only members, and yet you have shed the "Sub-commandante" labels and whatnot for others. How is this done, if it can be done, or does one need to ask a mod?

Thanks and sorry for the OT.

I'll address this thread anyway.

John Stuart-Mill had some sweet ideas in my mind, or at least when I took my first philosophy class last year...

And as for #3, in an anarchist-communist society, there wouldn't be elected officials anywhere near the main industries. This would be controlled by workers counsils and factory comittees, etc...
Otherwise I think these laws or pillars are great.

-- August

[Seeker]

I can't agree to that philosophy being used as a rule. Too much is open to interpretation.

In fact, one could argue that such a state already exists.

Anyone and anything standing in the way of profit can be said to be "harming someone's interests" and is dealt with accordingly.

Also, I resent the notion that I "owe" anyone a god damn thing. I'll fight if and when I feel like it, I'll work if and when I feel like it, and if you don't like that, you have two options: blow me, or blow me away.

Mill explicitly supports money lenders in the act of usury, thinks it is proper for people whom he considers "barbaric" to have despotic ruler that can show them the proper way to live, and has wrongly assumed that a person's "occupation is freely chosen, and can be freely resigned."

What he is discussing is slave-owner's liberty.



whoever is preferred to another in any contest for an object which both desire, reaps benefit from the loss of others, from their wasted exertion and their disappointment. But it is, by common admission, better for the general interest of mankind, that persons should pursue their objects undeterred by this sort of consequences.

This is the basis of neo-liberal economic policy, or as Mill himself put it:


This is the so-called doctrine of Free Trade, which rests on grounds different from, though equally solid with, the principle of individual liberty asserted in this Essay.





Here is another gem:


The limitation in number, for instance, of beer and spirit houses, for the express purpose of rendering them more difficult of access, and diminishing the occasions of temptation, not only exposes all to an inconvenience because there are some by whom the facility would be abused, but is suited only to a state of society in which the labouring classes are avowedly treated as children or savages, and placed under an education of restraint, to fit them for future admission to the privileges of freedom. This is not the principle on which the labouring classes are professedly governed in any free country; and no person who sets due value on freedom will give his adhesion to their being so governed, unless after all efforts have been exhausted to educate them for freedom and govern them as freemen, and it has been definitively proved that they can only be governed as children. The bare statement of the alternative shows the absurdity of supposing that such efforts have been made in any case which needs be considered here.

In other words, if the working class does not behave the way a ruling class wants them too, the ruling class must try harder to change the people's behavior. Elsewhere in his Essay, Mill advocates the use of pain, forced labor, and other means of inflicting suffering as the tools to be employed in affecting behavioral changes.





there is no one so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by whom it shall be conducted, as those who are personally interested in it. This principle condemns the interferences, once so common, of the legislature, or the officers of government, with the ordinary processes of industry. But this part of the subject has been sufficiently enlarged upon by political economists, and is not particularly related to the principles of this Essay.

He claims the effects that capitalists have on their employees, the environment, and so on ("ordinary processes of industry") is not related to the debate about at what point does an action sufficently interfere with the liberty of another to say that action is criminal.


The management of . . . the great enterprises of industry by the union of those who voluntarily supply the pecuniary means [i.e. Capitalists], is further recommended . . .



In countries of more advanced civilization and of a more insurrectionary spirit, the public, accustomed to expect everything to be done for them by the State, or at least to do nothing for themselves without asking from the State not only leave to do it, but even how it is to be done, naturally hold the State responsible for all evil which befals them, and when the evil exceeds their amount of patience, they rise against the government and make what is called a revolution;

Is that how it happens? Wow, Marx was way off. :rolleyes:



every body of Americans is able to . . . carry on any public business with a sufficient amount of intelligence, order, and decision. This is what every free people ought to be

:blink:




no locality has a moral right to make itself by mismanagement a nest of pauperism, necessarily overflowing into other localities, and impairing the moral and physical condition of the whole labouring community.

CONSUME!!!






No sir, I don't like it. Mill may have been ahead of his time, but everything he sugested has already come to pass in America, and look where it has gotten us.

[Decolonize The Left]

Ok, perhaps I was confused on the topics, as well as Mill's philosophies...

Fair enough, Seeker explained a bit though.

Still didn't answer my OT question though... :(

-- August

[Rissen]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2005, 12:23 AM
I'd like an example of #2 please :)
For example, no-one would die of starvation, unless everyone else was as well, because anyone who needs food would be given it. However, it could be said that if you chose not to work to earn your food, then it would not be against your will to starve, otherwise you'd work. Of course that would not apply to people who cannot work for one reason or another.

Oh, and August, it's in 'edit profile info'...

Edit: But I see you've already changed it. Nevermind then.

[Seeker]

No law-abiding individual should be allowed to suffer against his or her will


OK, sounds great.



unless in doing so a greater number of law-abiding individuals will be freed from suffering.

:unsure:



This is roughly the same argument that is used to justify torture of P.O.W.'s, and it takes quite a bit of twisting to make your example fit that. Maybe a greater number of people would be suffering against their wills if they were forced to support a hypothetical "lazy bastard", in which case letting him go hungery against his will prevents more suffering than it causes overall.





However, it could be said that if you chose not to work to earn your food, then it would not be against your will to starve, otherwise you'd work.

What if society has no need of you and it is not really your choice not to work? If people were to support you then, would they suffer any less than they would by supporting the "lazy bastard"?

If they do not suffer any less, then there is no justification for feeding one and not the other.

Since humans are about 98% geneticaly identicle, we do not have widely varying metabolisims. A 95lb waif eats about the same as a 250lb body builder when their apetites are compaired to an elephant's. Feeding one mouth is just as hard as feeding the next, so then why should people suffer more? Is reason the person is in need the crux of the issue? What if the reason were kept hidden from the supporters by some device such as a bank?



To each according to need.

[slim]

A true society always has a need for people. That is the definition of a good society- everyone being valued and the "cogs" working in compiment.

Therefore, no-one would be "surplus". In a just and fair society, citizens would feel obliged to work for the good of their comrades. They would see their family starve and feel guilt.

One who can be seen as a lazy bastard after this point cannot be seen as law abiding because they are damaging their community.

[Rissen]

Originally posted by [email protected] 28 2005, 11:31 AM
Since humans are about 98% geneticaly identicle, we do not have widely varying metabolisims. A 95lb waif eats about the same as a 250lb body builder when their apetites are compaired to an elephant's. Feeding one mouth is just as hard as feeding the next, so then why should people suffer more? Is reason the person is in need the crux of the issue? What if the reason were kept hidden from the supporters by some device such as a bank?
Uhm, okay.

Humans are 98% genetically identical? And this, you claim, isn't 'widely varying'? Well, that's odd, I seem to recall hearing a statement that there is, I quote, "more than 95% to 98% similarity between related genes in humans and apes in general".

And as to the statement about elephants, I wonder whether you realised that that is clearly misleading. After all, compared to the planet earth, humans and elephants are roughly the same size, are they not?

Just as motives are important in court, so reasons are important elewhere. How would a bank, which would most likely not exist in the society I am proposing, hide the reasons from society?

[Vanguard1917]

Mill tried to reconcile the irreconcilable: the clash of interests between capital and labour. Which is why Marx ripped him apart... on an intellectual level, of course.

[Seeker]

I am more closely related to you, genetically speaking, than a cat is to its own mother. The point is that one human's upkeep is more or less the same as every other human's upkeep (ignoring medical problems).


One more human will put an amount of strain on this planet's ecosystem that is relatively the same as one more elephant (almost none at all). However, humans are not planetary in their greatness, so to a human there is a big difference.


The banks need to be reinvented. You are right to think that the institutions known as banks today could not exist in a communist society, but I still think there will be some form of storage and distribution facility that I would call a "bank". It might have a fund for "the needy" in general, and when you made a contribution to it you would have no idea what needy person would be given your stuff or why they were in need.

If you didn't know that you were supporting a bum, and there was more than enough to go around, then why would giving charity cause you to suffer?

I'm of the opinion that all living beings are equally worthy of respect (although those who spread disorder need to be dealt with). If a person's mind is in such a state that working causes them intense suffering, society has to accept that person's "ability" to give back to the community is restricted.

I would not want such a person living in my community, but I would be happy to feed them before sending them off to find somewhere else to stay. In their wanderings, they will possibly be performing a service in simply existing (they would accumulate a vast wealth of information and culture).

It is a matter of numbers. If a community has to support both the person who is legitimately out of work and the person with a simple aversion to working, then twice as many resources are being pumped into non-productive sectors, creating an opportunity loss for the entire community.

[Rissen]

Well, yes, that's why I proposed a distinction between people who can't work for whatever reason (like the one you stated) and people who are just lazy. As you say, the person who cannot work may be useful in some other ways, like the example you suggested.

[Decolonize The Left]

Ok some things need to be clarified.
All further writing should be taken with "in my humble opinion" in front of it.

1) "Laziness": Laziness is a product of capitalism. People are lazy when their job is boring, or they don't care about what they are producing, or they arn't being payed enough, "why work harder? I don't another dime. This job is boring as hell, I'm gonna relax for a while. Boss is always on my ass, I'm gonna see if I can cut out after he leaves..." etc...
In an anarchist society people would work on what they enjoyed. If you were previously an accountant, but found it boring and really enjoy gardening, to the gardens you would go. And you would produce beautiful plants and spices and vegetables to share with the community, and would be respected for that. This is incentive.

2) Banks and Seeker's post involving them: Seeker I want to point out that after the revolution money would disappear. Money only complicates the world. With the disappearence of money we not only would discover millions of people who were previously useless but now want to do productive work, but we will also eliminate price. Banks will not need to exist for money or for goods.
A steel mill will produce what is needed according to their research and what they think will be used, what people tell them they need. Money is not an issue anymore.
If the hungry want food, they stop and ask: "I'm moving across the country to work on the West Coast and need a place to sleep the night and a meal, can you help me?" Of course, everyone has as much a right to food and shelter as anyone else. A community would take this person in and feed them immediately, why? Because they can, there is no danger to them. They arn't loosing valuable food which they spend their 'hard earned money' on. They are helping.

-- August

[Rissen]

Of course. Greed will hopefully be non-existant along with crime etc.

Argh, someome should draw up an image of what society will (hopefully) look like; I keep losing pieces of the puzzle. *sigh* I really wish people would work together more. Maybe I'll have to start a thread in which everyone can discuss it, and I'll edit the first post as ideas get added or removed.

Unless someone else wants to, that is...