Lawful but Immoral

[Ambi]

Spoiler: Factory farms; legal in many places, arguably immoral and cruel

ha! morals. i personally don't care about morals, i care about logic.

and when it comes to threads about morals there's always someone who has other morals and instead of politely disagreeing will tell you that your a monster.

Do you believe in using logic to figure out methods of making the world a less painful place?

 

[Manji187]

Recently, I've been assigned to write an article on what is lawful but immoral by today's standards. Problem is, I've got squat; I just don't know where to start.

So, my fellow Escapists, would you be kind enough to help a fellow, and post the laws that you think aren't moral by your standards?

How about the U.S. military's (primarily Air Force) use of drones (Predator/ Reaper) in Afghanistan and Iraq?

It is legal (according to International Humanitarian Law/ the Law of Armed Conflict: Geneva Conventions and Additional Protocols), but is it moral? It's not that IHL/ LOAC is immoral as such...it's that its application (the clash of battlefield reality and the relevant legal technicalities and their interpretation) produces highly questionable results (morally). More and more the use of drones gives the impression of being one-sided slaughter. Is any victory acceptable...even one where you have stooped to the level of a beast?

Mind you, the CIA's use of drones in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia is something else entirely...the legality of that activity is highly debated/ contested (often called targeted killing).

 

[Sov.reign]

1st cousin sex...

 

[rossatdi]

I don't really want to speak to you any more. I told you at the start of the discussion that it would come to no end. You have nothing new to add to my thought process, neither any useful criticism. What you have is bias, and a lot of it. The bias causes you to be hostile to change, ideas for change and people who advocate for change. I have spoken to your kind before and there is rarely any use from it.

Everything you say already crosses my mind as I write in the first place.
Maybe when I was 15 and philosophising, I could have used your biased first-stage criticism. Now I am far beyond that and need no input from angry closet-conservatives.

Aw falling back ad hominem so soon? Nothing screams a valid concept than a lack of will to defend it.

'Angry closet conservative'? Based on? Quite a large insult with nothing to back it up.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

what about dictatorships where the leader of the country can order genocides or whatever horrible things they feel like doing. And since they make the laws its legal. unless you count international laws.

 

[Jakub324]

Euthanasia. If I was suffering, dying of a painful, terminal illness, why not just let me die?

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Euthanasia. If I was suffering, dying of a painful, terminal illness, why not just let me die?

I wonder how often there really is no chance of survival. I wouldnt know.

 

[Biodeamon]

Spoiler: Factory farms; legal in many places, arguably immoral and cruel

ha! morals. i personally don't care about morals, i care about logic.

and when it comes to threads about morals there's always someone who has other morals and instead of politely disagreeing will tell you that your a monster.

Do you believe in using logic to figure out methods of making the world a less painful place?

no. call me a monster if you like but i`m not one usually swayed by emotions or pictures of the brutality of the world. you can`t ignore that this stuff happens and act shocked every time you see something bad in the world. I plan on using logic to make the world better not less painful.

 

[Korolev]

I know a lot of stuff that's moral yet unlawful (euthanasia for one). But Lawful yet immoral? Hm - if you're talking about Western nations, I'd go with recreational hunting. Don't get me wrong, I eat meat. And I respect hunters who kill animals to eat, or use the body parts of said animals. If a hunter teaches his son to hunt deer for self-sufficiency, that's fine. I've got no problems with that - hunting a deer in the woods for food is no different than buying meat at the supermarket.

It's a problem when you get people who just hunt for the sake of saying "Hey! I shot this defenceless animal and now I'm gonna put its corpse on my truck and do a pose while putting my foot on it's head! I shot a deer that couldn't possibly fight back! What a man I am!" It's when people kill things merely to "prove" their "manhood" or "toughness", that I begin to have a problem.

You know what WOULD prove how tough you are? Fight a grizzly bear with a pocket knife. Or a Great White Shark with an hammer. If you could pull that off, I'd respect your strength immensely (although I would question your sanity).

However, going into the woods and using a gun to shoot a deer that poses no threat and can't fight back is not a sign of "strength". It doesn't make you "tough". It might prove you're a quiet person who can sneak up on a deer, but it doesn't prove you're a "man". Anyone who would kill a defenceless or nearly defenceless animal for kicks or for "pride" is a shallow, SHALLOW human being.

Once again, I'm not insulting genuine hunters who hunt to eat or gather useful materials. I've got nothing against those guys. I only hate the "trophy" hunters who think that mounting the head of an antelope or buck who couldn't possibly fight back proves them to be a "tough man"! Oooooh, so tough, shooting that animal like that! What a big strong man you are! If you hadn't shot that deer, who KNOWS what it might have done! What a hero!

EDIT: I suppose what I'm saying is that I find hunters who REVEL in the fact that they've killed another creature for the sake of killing it, immoral. Hunters who hunt but don't gloat are hunters I respect. Hunters who say "YEEEEEHAAAAWWWW! Didya see that! Ah don' shot that deer so hard he don' flew backwards in that there forest! Awesome! I'm such a man, gunning that deer down like that!" are hunters I DON'T respect. Killing might be necessary, but never glorious.

 

[Kair]

I don't really want to speak to you any more. I told you at the start of the discussion that it would come to no end. You have nothing new to add to my thought process, neither any useful criticism. What you have is bias, and a lot of it. The bias causes you to be hostile to change, ideas for change and people who advocate for change. I have spoken to your kind before and there is rarely any use from it.

Everything you say already crosses my mind as I write in the first place.
Maybe when I was 15 and philosophising, I could have used your biased first-stage criticism. Now I am far beyond that and need no input from angry closet-conservatives.

Aw falling back ad hominem so soon? Nothing screams a valid concept than a lack of will to defend it.

'Angry closet conservative'? Based on? Quite a large insult with nothing to back it up.

I am continuing the discussion with someone with a little less aggressive behaviour. That is, a little less aggressive and a little less biased. It makes a difference.


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In order to demonstrate that this is immoral, you must, by the basic definition of the word immoral, demonstrate that it is wrong using an argument that the majority of people subject to the situation would agree with. What right does the collective have to my efforts? What obligation do I have to these people to give them free and ready access to a resource that I, myself, produce?

The right they have to tap into an infinite resource is the right they get by benefiting from it, while not doing any harm at all. Happiness and utility for all Humans is right in itself, it is what we base right and wrong on. Compensation for making this resource can be provided in many ways, but in an enlightened utilitarian society it is irrelevant.

Currency, as an abstraction of value, is subject to the whims of popular perception to a degree. This is not unique to currency. For example, a piece of meat (say a 10 ounce prime ribeye), has intrinsic value. It is a physical object that I can possess for a time and I can easily convert this resource into various things I require for survival (e.g. I can eat it). If I take a similar cut of meat of identical nutritional value that is not prime (not aged), I will find it has the same intrinsic value and yet it costs less. The difference in cost is based not upon the intrinsic value of the item in question but rather on my perception that one item is better than the other (the aged steak is more tender and has a better flavor).

When this is abstracted to the point of currency, then problems can arise as the concept of value alone has no value save what we perceive it to have at the moment. Perceptions can, of course, be skewed with relative ease which can lead to situations where one party or another makes an absurd amount of money in an series of exchanges that produced next to nothing of actual value. This is not, itself, an immoral act in general though there are plenty of specific instances where sufficient harm was done to call it immoral (the housing market collapse for example).

Yes.

Crime is less often a symptom of mental illness than it is of social illness. Regardless, crime has a detrimental impact upon society and, in spite of the best efforts of civilizations around the world across 5,000 years of recorded history we have never managed to abolish it entirely. Thus the decision to punish rather than treat is both a moral one as well as a pragmatic one. A great many people see crime as something to be punished rather than a problem to be solved, and the cost of solving the underlying social issues behind a great deal of crime is simply far to great for most people to consider. As such, the choice to punish rather than rehabilitate is a moral one (depending upon the group you question of course), while the choice to deal with the obvious symptom of the social problem rather than the root cause is a pragmatic choice.

Social illness is the mental illness. I was not talking about abnormal mental illness, I was talking about the mental illness nearly all humans share.

Quote:I try to differentiate between human and Human. A human is half-instinctual, half-sentient. It is a product of its surroundings, a simple print. Most of the population on Earth is like this today.
A Human is nearly fully-sentient, uses reasoning, is aware of its existence and biology and therefore also refuses to let instincts cloud its mind and only uses its instincts intentionally. It is ironically also a product of its surroundings, but a much more advanced print, capable of being much more independent from its surroundings through inner reflection.

The above is the mental illness.

Freedom as an abstract concept is a tricky thing to define. The reality is that the only power anyone ever holds over another is physical in nature. A person can torture you, they can threaten you, and they can kill you. Yet even the threat of such extreme measures does not reduce one's capacity to choose. The difference between a "free" society and an oppressive one is simply that there are more actions that come with some consequence in an oppressive place. Freedom is ultimately only limited by a few things: those fundamental laws of nature (e.g. I cannot choose to fly using only my body), my willingness to accept the consequences for a given choice and my capacity to perceive the existence of a choice.

Thus, in a certain sense, it is impossible to curtail my freedom as doing so ultimately requires my consent. Applying a penalty simply serves as little more than a way to test if I really believe in a particular choice or not.

I don't believe this was the subject I was entering. I was talking about the need to restrict the half-animals because the consequences of not restricting them would be negative.

 

[ExileNZ]

Drug prohibition.

What moral right does the state have to tell me what I can and can't ingest into my own body?

Anything that'll make you dangerous to those around you.

Ah, so it's harm prevention that you're after.

In which case, the solution is: legalise drugs.

Here's the thing: You cannot stop people taking drugs, even if you make them illegal. People have always and will always take drugs, there is literally nothing you can do. Making drugs illegal doesn't stop people using them, it just means that they're more expensive and that that the market is controlled by organised criminals.

If you disagree, then I take it you also disagree with alcohol being legal, which fuels far more violence than any illegal drug I have ever heard of.

I'll thank you not to put words in my mouth or railroad my opinion based on your own logic.

On the contrary, Prohibition only proved that people will get their hands on drugs whether you want them to or not. However, you'll note that there are tens of thousands of legal drugs out there, but only a few of them are used recreationally. I'll assume for argument's sake that you're talking about illegal and/or mind-altering drugs, such as opiates, methamphetamines and marajuana, as opposed to all those other, legal drugs, which are just as easily mis-used but are quickly overshadowed by those first three.

Now, formalities out of the way, here's the thing. There IS something you can do about people taking drugs. Prohibition of anything may not stop the people who really want to use it (in the case of alcohol in the 30s, that meant pretty much everyone) but it quickly puts up a first barrier of entry: people have to ask themselves whether they want it bad enough to break the law, knowing full-well they can be punished for it. This reduces the number of potential clients right off the bat. It also means that the number of channels that people can acquire it through are limited and of course limits the number of people ultimately using - it's easier to police a few people than everyone.

More importantly it stops large, morally bankrupt multinationals from growing their own dope and forcing it down our throats like they do every day with, say, cigarettes.
(http://www.artofsmoking.com/jcamel1.html - note that Joe was designed to sell smokes to kids and it still took 10 years to put a stop to it)

Also note that making drugs more expensive puts in a second barrier of entry - price. I don't smoke and I never have, but almost everyone I know who does keeps telling me they need to quit and it's too damned expensive. Likewise, I may have been vaguely tempted by tales of joints, but never enough to pay the $20 required for a decent high (and before you ask, yes, that's what it cost where I come from).

Ultimately of course, you can never stop everyone from taking drugs, but you can limit the number of people taking them and thereby limit the collateral damage they cause.

Which brings us to alcohol. Alcohol is legal, but is very restricted in it's use. You can't drive on it, business owners can have you thrown out because of it and in some places you can't even drink it in public. You can get shitfaced at home and beat your friends family, but that's a social problem and we have laws against that too (again, more strongly reinforced in some countries than others).

So no, I'm not against alcohol being legal because it's controlled and because by and large people know how to use it responsibly (I'm currently living in France, where my family is weird because we don't open a bottle at every meal). Of course there are more alcohol-related crimes, alcohol is the single most proliferate drug in the world. You give 100 people a bottle of whiskey and 100 people an ounce of coke and I guarantee you'll see a far higher percentage of violent crime in the latter group.

All that to say, in spite of certain abuses and double standards, there's a reason drug-use is controlled. Legalising drugs isn't magically going to make the world less dangerous.

 

[Naeo]

EDIT: Actually, nevermind, I'm not getting involved in this topic.

 

[Brandon237]

Drug prohibition.

What moral right does the state have to tell me what I can and can't ingest into my own body?

The flipside of this being the fact cigarettes are legal. Considering the harm they do compared to other drugs which are illegal but far less harmful.

Seems at very least hypocritical that the government doesnt mind me getting cancer but wont let me take ecstacy on a night out.

Yea, have you considered that the government might be trying to save MY life by not allowing YOU to take a hallucinogen? For some reason, I'm ok with this. They are trying to negate the possibility of second hand smoke inhalation as well by forcing smokers to smoke in designated places. So don't start with the "it's not fair" argument. If you want to get into this PM me.

OT- I would have to say any law that punishes a citizen for protecting themselves or another person in distress.

"Imminent danger



As previously stated, before you can prevail under a self-defense theory, you must prove that another was about to kill, seriously injure, or unlawfully touch you.5 A threat of future harm (regardless of how significant the harm may be) will not suffice, as the danger must be immediate.6

Likewise, prior threats are not sufficient to give rise to this defense if they are not coupled with an overt act demonstrating an immediate intention of executing the threat.7 And on that note, the threat must be of an unlawful nature...a threat of a lawful arrest, for example, will not excuse an attack as self-defense.8"


If I shot someone that was in my house without my permission, but they did not pose an "imminent danger" to me I would be convicted of murder. The person was in my house without my permission, or even my knowledge, and I am supposed to assume they are not going to hurt me? Hope it never comes down to that, because I would need a damn good lawyer to fight that murder charge.

Yikes, I knew laws on said subject were dodgy in many countries... but that unfair?! It almost renders the concept of self-defence useless, because if you have to give the bastard time to attack you to "prove imminent danger", then you are likely dead anyway. That needs changing, NAOW! I've always thought that being able to defend yourself from a trespasser was important, regardless of whether they even knew you were there or not. Any person in your home who has not been given permission to be there, who has made a conscious effort to get though your security, you should legally be allowed to assume has malicious intent. Criminals should not be given lee-way, if someone is already committing the crime of trespassing, then the home-owner should be given the benefit of the doubt, those laws on imminent danger are frankly useless and borderline criminal in themselves.

 

[rossatdi]

I am continuing the discussion with someone with a little less aggressive behaviour. That is, a little less aggressive and a little less biased. It makes a difference.

Aw, can't defend your arguments so you refuse the need to? You must be really sure of your own arguments! It's okay to call someone close minded and a closest conservative but when you're actually called out on contradictions in your own logic that's "aggressive"?

 

[Trillovinum]

Drug prohibition.

What moral right does the state have to tell me what I can and can't ingest into my own body?

that's to keep drug-dealers from causing trouble as well as drug users from causing disturbaces.

I back Sgt. Dante on this one as well

 

[Trillovinum]

Drug prohibition.

What moral right does the state have to tell me what I can and can't ingest into my own body?

that's to keep drug-dealers from causing trouble as well as drug users from causing disturbaces.

I back Sgt. Dante on this one as well

 

[Odbarc]

Recently, I've been assigned to write an article on what is lawful but immoral by today's standards. Problem is, I've got squat; I just don't know where to start.

So, my fellow Escapists, would you be kind enough to help a fellow, and post the laws that you think aren't moral by your standards?

In Canada, I think, if you perform a rolling stop (ie, not stopping at a street sign) and you hit and kill someone with your car, it's a two week sentence or a $500 fine. Vehicular manslaughter in this regard is a $500 fine. Stuff like that. Find an obscure law.

What about that one law where if you cheat on your wife, she can sue your mistress even if she didn't know he was married. Legal.

 

[Macgyvercas]

And here I was under the impression this thread would be about how things that are legal but immoral would make a Lawful Good person's head explode. Ahh well.

 

[The Dark Umbra]

Laws around the world prohibiting homosexuality, or any other sex act.

What moral right does the state have to tell people what they can and can't do in private between consenting adults?

So raping a 3 month old child is okay, or newborn puppy. Or what if the consenting adult is mentally retarded? just asking