[MD] freedom is for the rich

[Laird Bedore]

pholden at davtv.com wrote:
> Quoting Arlo Bensinger <ajb102 at psu.edu>:
>
>   
>> [Arlo]
>> If you define slavery as being part of a country that does not allow its 
>> poor to freeze to death in the winter, sign me up for slavery.
>>     
> [Platt]
> Nowhere do I find in the MOQ a moral duty to help the poor. I do find 
> the right of an individual to respond to DQ and act on his own judgment. Forcibly
> taking a man's property in order to serve another's purposes is indeed a form of
> slavery. Nice that you think a little slavery is a good thing.  
>   
[Laird]
Chock one up to literalism. ;) (my cheap attempt at sarcastic humor. I 
heard sarcasm was the ante to get a hand at this table! hehe, okay, I'd 
better stop now.)

To take your point:
A moral duty to help the poor - I'll break this down two ways depending 
on duty ('forced') and duty ('willing'):
1a. Being willing to help the poor: social patterns helping other social 
patterns. Cool.
1b. Being forced to help the poor:  social pattern A putting down social 
pattern B to help social pattern C. Conflict.
2. The right of an individual to respond to DQ and act on his own 
judgement: DQ helping intellectual patterns. Cool.
3. Forcibly taking a man's property in order to serve another's 
purposes: social pattern A putting down social pattern B to help social 
pattern C. Conflict, same as 1b.
3a. Willingly giving your property in order to serve another's purposes: 
social patterns helping other social patterns. Cool.

As you're alluding to in 1b and 3(original), social pattern B gets the 
short end of the deal, and there's contention going on here. You're 
trying to make a point of condition 2 being held down by condition 3, 
but I'm not seeing such an example here. Putting social pattern B above 
social pattern C before gauging their "values" is (understandably) 
causing friction in the discussion. When there's contention between two 
social patterns (B and C), the pragmatic MoQ approach is to aim for the 
greater total good, and that's what Arlo and others are trying to say.

-Laird