Government, Authority, and Ethics 2016-05-22

You're on a jury. You vote for a murder to be sent to jail for the rest of his life. Would you jail him, yourself?

Same scenario, but on a different case. Serial killer/rapist/everything elser. You vote for the death penalty. Would you kill him, yourself?

Something less extreme. You catch a Lyft driver texting on their phone while they drive. They weren't swerving and they did it at a red light. Do you take a fine right from their wallet and put it on their record?

Your uncle has a small, under the table business. Do you imprison him because he's not following the law and paying taxes?

If you would not do all of the above, do you think that it's acceptable if someone else does it?

It's my impression that most people have a double standard with their political views and what they would actually do. Laws are mostly worthless without their enforcement; I think that's a fair claim to make. But their enforcement is inherently violent. You can't ask someone for a fine. If they say no and there's no recourse, eventually, everyone will always say no. Unless they are a select few who think they deserve their punishment and have accepted it.

If you vote for a law that imposes a tax on soda, the risk to those affected is ultimately death. It seems ridiculous, but if I really don't want to do something, and you really want me to do it, in my resisting: I might try to get away from you. It turns into a police chase. I accidentally run someone over. Oops. Cops shoot out my tires and get me in the process.

You might say, if they just did what they were told, this wouldn't happen to them. That's true. But do you feel it's right to have a forceful say of what goes on in someone's life?

I am not saying that there is no place for action and for violence. Violence is horrible, but sometimes it's just reality. If there was someone who you believed was actually, wrongfully, seriously threatening people's lives, wouldn't the right thing to be to kill them, yourself? Or lock them up, that too, but that isn't always a simple option.

I think that if people felt that they had to play judge, jury, and excecutioner, they'd do it a lot less often. When it's a different job for each person, they just take it as their job without actual responsibility for the thing at hand. Just passing the torch.

My political views are mostly simple. I don't believe in using force on some grand, governmental scale. I will use force as an individual, but asking someone else to do what I won't do is wrong. I don't see any other way about it.

I don't believe that there should be any supreme authority. You might say that society would just turn to senseless violence, but isn't it already? And how is concentrating power of generally questionable people actually making it better? It's different, not better.

The only person you control is yourself. You can help your elderly neighbor get her medicine. You can stop the town's ax murdrer. You can talk to the reckless driver. Everyone else is up to everyone else.

That said.

If someone comes into your business, you can choose to serve them, or not. If someone wants to rent from you, it is about agreement which you can rightfully (maybe not rightly) decline for any reason. The choice is yours.

The whole notion of voting for laws simply says that a majority dictates some subset of the population to do what they want. There's no individual choice. It's majority versus everyone.

Instead of debating about whether we allow trannies in bathrooms, why don't we just control our own bathrooms and live with the consequences? If I have a business, shouldn't it be my choice? If you think not, are you going to hold me at gun point and force me? If you don't like it, why continue to pay me for my brisket sandwiches?