ACism & Personal Responsibility

[maybedinero]

I asked this question in a thread back in October and no answer was forthcoming, so I'm reposting it in its own thread.

12) Doesn't ACism assume that individuals are 100% responsible for their own actions (with regard to committing crimes and making unwise life decisions e.g. drinking to incapability, spending food money on slot machines)? What about mental illness? Addiction?

[BCPVP]

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Doesn't ACism assume that individuals are 100% responsible for their own actions ?

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I don't think so. An AC society would develop norms with regards to things like mental illness. I'm not sure what addiction has to do with it because people can change their addictive behaviors, but can't (usually) change their mental health.

[mosdef]

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Doesn't ACism assume that individuals are 100% responsible for their own actions

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I would say that ACism doesn't assume anything about individuals. It's not that people are forced to be 100% responsible for their own action, it's that people would be answerable 100% to their own preferences only. "Protection" for mental illness or addiction would emerge through the actions of the subset of the population that prefer to care for these people, rather than having the view that they should be cared for forced on everybody.

[hmkpoker]

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12) Doesn't ACism assume that individuals are 100% responsible for their own actions (with regard to committing crimes and making unwise life decisions e.g. drinking to incapability, spending food money on slot machines)? What about mental illness? Addiction?

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The idea is to internalize the consequences of individual action as much as possible, so that the proximate cause of the action knows he will reap the brunt of the punishment or the reward. This creates a strong incentive to act toward personal (and accidentally mutual) benefit, while minimizing harm on others. Morality doesn't really enter into it (heck, some of us are hard determinists); it's not about right and wrong, it's about creating incentives that will result in the most optimal society. If you protect anyone from the negative consequences of their actions, they will pursue those actions more, and liberals deny this to no end.

[Nielsio]

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it's not about right and wrong, it's about creating incentives that will result in the most optimal society. If you protect anyone from the negative consequences of their actions, they will pursue those actions more

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So if it's not about morality, then why does it matter what people do?

[TomCollins]

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it's not about right and wrong, it's about creating incentives that will result in the most optimal society. If you protect anyone from the negative consequences of their actions, they will pursue those actions more

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So if it's not about morality, then why does it matter what people do?

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[ShakeZula06]

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Doesn't ACism assume that individuals are 100% responsible for their own actions (with regard to committing crimes and making unwise life decisions e.g. drinking to incapability, spending food money on slot machines)?

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They are 100% responsible now. Who else would be responsible for it? Their mom? I don't get your question.
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What about mental illness? Addiction?

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What about them?

[mosdef]

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They are 100% responsible now. Who else would be responsible for it? Their mom? I don't get your question.

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I think what he meant was that individuals would take 100% responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

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What about mental illness? Addiction?

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What about them?

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The implied question is "why should we hold people responsible for the consequences of their actions is they are incapable of defining the course of their action?"