[MD] freedom is for the rich

[pholden at davtv.com]

Quoting Laird Bedore <lmbedore at vectorstar.com>:

> 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.

The question is what is the "greater good" among patterns A, B and C? On what
basis does one decide? Incidentally, Pirsig's view of a pragmatic approach 
is less than flattering. See Chap. 29 of Lila.

Platt





-------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/