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Old 08-21-2007, 11:46 PM
John Kilduff John Kilduff is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2006
Posts: 1,903
Default Re: Simple reason why I do not think taxation = theft

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No, a moral code can be adduced as incorrect because it is theoretically unworkable and unsustainable.

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I don't think so. I think at the point of "workability" and "sustainability" we're no longer talking about right vs. wrong. Considerations of the consequences that one particular person's moral code would have on others falls under the realm of "acknowledging and coping with the reality that different moral codes exist", it says nothing of the relative merits of those moral codes. Conflict does not imply one side is right and one side is wrong.

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I'm trying to say a moral code could be seen as wrong if its adoption by the entire species would cause extinction of the species. Unrestrained murdering would fall into this category.

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There is no reason to believe that "unrestrained murdering" would cause extinction of the species, in fact it might improve the species from an evolutionary aspect.

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Maybe "unrestrained" isn't the right word, but if murdering were highly prevalent, that would cause extinction of the species, since it takes far longer to grow an adult than it does to murder an adult. If over half the population (well-mixed) were frequent murderers, the human spcies would die out. And probably it wouldn't take nearly 50% to achieve that.

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You haven't provided any further support, just equivication on your original premise. There are numerous mechanisms that could stop "frequent murderers" from causing extinction of the species. In fact the only scenarios that would result in total extinction would be access to a weapon that indirectly caused extinction in the aftermath of its use, or some sort of heritable mass hysteria/insanity overwhelming the "rational" population, in which case it is really the genetics that caused the extinction, not "murder" in and of itself.

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I mean if murder was a common and accepted moral code, and practiced frequently by much or most of the populace, the humnan species would die out. It wouldn't take a doomsday weapon, just perhaps half of all your neighbors frequently going on murderous rampages with, say, knives or guns or bats.

Therefore I think a moral code which approves of murder is objectively wrong, because it couldn't work as a moral code.

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Your reasoning is circular if by "moral code" you mean something that is "universal". Your premise that a "majority" adhering to that code is a tacit admission that it isn't universal. If it isn't universal then you have no basis for the claim that it would result in extinction.

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I'd guess that if 25% of the world's population (well-mixed, not in clearly segregated groups) followed a moral code of frequent murdering, it would pretty much wipe out the species.
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