gadfly@ihlpa.UUCP (Gadfly) (10/14/86)
-- > in response, gadfly says: > *My* ethical system that demands "this obligation"? You say this as if > it had to be some bizarre cultist dogma. I'm a Jew, and my religion > specifies 613 obligations in some detail.[etc] > > Correct me if i'm wrong, but you seem to imply that anyone with any sense > of ethics in their yuppie, designer brains is a Jew (or at least > acknowledges these 613 specific obligations of which you speak). > The person who responded (and me) is asking not why you feel that *you* > have these obligations, but why you feel that they are self-evident > to anyone WASOEITYDB, and whence comes your right to impose said > obligations by force on one who does not share your view of them. > -- > jeanne a. e. devoto Well, I've certainly stirred up a hornet's nest here, haven't I? A number of folks have gotten on my case over both the style and content of my assertions. As to the former, this is a public forum with a large audience. I have an obligation (no, not one of the 613) not just to present my perspectives but to entertain. As Humphrey Bogart put it, "All I owe the public is a good show." As to the latter, I'll restate my case a bit less flippantly: We all have obligations to other people and society in general. This is simply axiomatic. If you don't believe it, I certainly can't force you to, and I wouldn't want to try. There are, as I have noted previously, a number of tantalizingly different ethical philosophies--you have quite a banquet to choose from. I do not proselytize for any particular one. But if you reject them all, then you're adopting the yuppie credo: "The one who dies with the most toys wins." And then I really pity you. Tell me, O ethical egoists, just what do you think life is about anyway? *** *** JE MAINTIENDRAI ***** ***** ****** ****** 14 Oct 86 [23 Vendemiaire An CXCV] ken perlow ***** ***** (312)979-8042 ** ** ** ** ihnp4!ihlpa!gadfly *** *** <== NOTE NEW ADDRESS!
bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein) (10/16/86)
Selfish and sometimes even disgusting reasons for helping the disadvantaged: 1. If you don't, a lot of them will become criminals. Besides the cost of police, courts etc, not getting hit over the head in the dark is of some value. The assumption is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Can I prove it? No. But I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that w/o any public assistance there would be more desparate people wandering about and there's no reason to assume that the costs of police etc would be any lower in that case (again, not to mention the cost to you of being a victim of crime.) You spend the dollar one way or another, not helping the poor may not be a bargain, it may cost you more. 2. But what about the poor who don't stand a chance of committing a crime? Well, I suppose here one borders on the ethical, would you like to help a person ONLY if they are a potential criminal (given the assumptions in (1))? I didn't think so. Also see below: 3. Most of us consider it unpleasant to walk down the streets and see people dying and diseased and begging desparately. Have you ever been to a Third World country? Try it, you'll feel better about our attitude towards the poor, it's really quite unpleasant. So, perhaps we help the poor for the same reason we build little city parks and clean up litter out of our tax coffers, it keeps things prettier. 4. People are a resource. We can make lots of money off of people. We can get rich off of people. Sometimes this requires getting those people into a shape where we can capitalize on them such as job training, remedial education and/or just helping their children (farming the next generation.) Do you want to carry boxes around a warehouse? No? But you want the boxes carried to expedite them to your favorite stereo store or whatever. Help the poor and they might get in shape to carry the boxes for you. Or, second order disgusting/selfish reasons for helping the poor: they form a CHEAP labor pool so you can lower wages and thus prices and thus afford more stereos, one in every room in your house! garage too! See, they'll compete for semi-skilled jobs if they're made semi-skilled. I'm surprised Reagan didn't start an Air Traffic Controller's Job Training program through social services when he fired all of them. 5. Pride. You may not experience this, but some of us do. See, in order to help the poor I have to be doing quite well myself. Charity etc is an expression of how well I am doing. You can extrapolate that to a nation, poor nations don't/can't help their poor. Us clever Americans are so wealthy and brilliant that helping the poor is a mere bagatelle to us, hell, we're rich enough to even give charity to Fortune 100 companies, let alone the starving. Noblesse oblige if you will. 6. This is similar to 1. You are complacent if you think revolution is impossible or that it would be a bargain fighting one, or just civil disorder (anyone remember the riots of the 60's? do you think they were free to the taxpayers? do you think that's as bad as it could get?) Remember, a revolution doesn't have to be successful to be costly. 7. Social subsidy. For example, one reason we formed the food stamp program was to provide a subsidy to an ailing agricultural sector. That form of welfare can only be spent on food which is why we made it that way. Now, we could have just let the farmers go broke or just let food prices rise and rise (thus putting the burden on individuals, remember that some of the cost of food stamps is borne by non-eating entities like corporations, many of whom could care less if an egg costs $10) but it seemed just as well to kill two (or several, see above) birds with one stone and force more tax dollars into the agricultural sector by way of the poor sector. -Barry Shein, Boston University P.S. Do I agree with all these arguments? No. Do I think at least some of them are the true motivations for many of our welfare programs? Yes. Then why don't people say that? If *you* were a politician et al would you say some of the things I said above? Of course not, you'd parrot what people on this list have been parrotting, "it's a nice thing to do", hah! Eat the poor...:-)
cramer@kontron.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (10/16/86)
> > in response, gadfly says: > > *My* ethical system that demands "this obligation"? You say this as if > > it had to be some bizarre cultist dogma. I'm a Jew, and my religion > > specifies 613 obligations in some detail.[etc] > > > > Correct me if i'm wrong, but you seem to imply that anyone with any sense > > of ethics in their yuppie, designer brains is a Jew (or at least > > acknowledges these 613 specific obligations of which you speak). > > The person who responded (and me) is asking not why you feel that *you* > > have these obligations, but why you feel that they are self-evident > > to anyone WASOEITYDB, and whence comes your right to impose said > > obligations by force on one who does not share your view of them. > > -- > > jeanne a. e. devoto > > As to the latter, I'll restate my case a bit less flippantly: We all > have obligations to other people and society in general. This is simply > axiomatic. If you don't believe it, I certainly can't force you to, But you are quite ready to use the government to impose YOUR notion of obligations on the rest of us, by forcing us to fund the governmental welfare system, rather than allowing the population to decide individually what charities, supporting what people, they will fund. > and I wouldn't want to try. There are, as I have noted previously, a > number of tantalizingly different ethical philosophies--you have quite > a banquet to choose from. I do not proselytize for any particular one. > But if you reject them all, then you're adopting the yuppie credo: > "The one who dies with the most toys wins." And then I really pity you. > Tell me, O ethical egoists, just what do you think life is about anyway? > > ken perlow ***** ***** I'm not going to argue for the Objectivist position -- I find it distasteful as well. I am willing to argue vigorously that at least it doesn't purport to impose an obligation on others. Clayton E. Cramer