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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> Communism is based on the premise that some central mechanism can determine
> the right quantities of everything for everyone, obviating the need for
> individual choices. It's based on the premise that people should work hard
> and not get the fruits of their labors, but rather suffer the consequences
> of the central mechanism's mistakes.
>
> Capitalism is based on the premise that no central mechanism can do as well
> at determining the right quantities as well as individual choice. It's based
> on the premise that people should work hard or not, as they choose, and
> suffer the consequences individually.
>
> That makes capitalism moral and communism immoral. That's a good enough
> argument right there.
Huge clarification to inflict on you-- it makes evidenced communism immoral
and evidenced capitalism moral (by utilitarian standards). To judge any
system using utilitarian morality, one needs evidence of the
happiness/unhappiness of the subjects in question. Making flat
generalizations presumes fundamental judgements about what makes people
happy that utilitarianism does not make nor wishes to (that I know of!).
Hence, one can theorize that communism is immoral for humans (but even then
it's only a theory), and one could only "prove" (via utilitaristic
principles) that *certain* systems at given times were moral or immoral. The
argument stands (from the utilitarian standpoint) that communism may indeed
be moral for a given set of people, and capitalism may be similarly immoral.
Even then, one could also argue (given your above statements) that a
"perfect" central body could make "perfect" decisions, making its members
universally happy, again resulting in a moral system, without altering the
populus. Either way, I don't think utilitarianism makes a moral judgement on
either government structure in the abscence of data on the society's
members' happiness under such a system.
DaveE
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Cuba
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| (...) But I'm not using utilitarian morality (were there such a thing, which there isn't) here. My argument has several legs, each should be evaluated independently. The utilitarian argument (which makes no reference to morality) is entirely (...) (23 years ago, 30-Aug-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Cuba
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| (...) Maybe you should have said that in the first place instead of Standard Anti US Diatribe # 8294, then. However it's not a statement that I agree with, except inasmuch as it's not possible to determine with certainty (from any real world (...) (23 years ago, 28-Aug-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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