badgenome said:
Thank you for proving once and for all that you don't understand rights based ethical systems. Peace out. |
You PERSONALLY are not able to argue from a rights-based framework if you personally aren't going to argue that a person has a right to life, but has a right to not be murdered. Being murdered is wrong in the context of a right to life. You can see this in the context of the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
I did not say you can't hold not being murdered as a right, but you can't effectively argue for it, because such an argument is arbitrary. Well, it is selectively done, because you want to avoid having it based on a right to life, because that would mean that people have a right to live and can do what they need to, in order to live, and it can lead to an argument that the state can engage in welfare, to make sure people die.
Reality is, you get around the problem of values being in conflict (it isn't even just between people, but also within someone else), by reducing everything to simply Liberty. By saying. "leave me alone" you argue that the only right people have is to Liberty and that such a right should not be interfered with in any way, by a state imposing on them, or any group. You frame all your reasoning around this.
This view, which looks like it resolves all sorts of conflicts, ends up missing a lot. This view would end up saying the only issue with the Hunger Games (the games in the book) is that the participants in the games didn't volunteer to go there. If they had volunteered, then the entire thing would be ok. There is nothing unethical about people fighting to the death for fame and glory, so long as they freely choose to do so. The bigger picture of a system that seems incredibly cruel is that you have no basis for saying it is wrong, if you merely reduce it to one of choice. And even in that world, the people in it choose to end up being entered in more. They can choose to be complaint. People can also choose to not watch. The entire system could go down, if people choose. So, in light of choice, you can't even argue that the games are wrong, because people choose to be compliant with it.
And also to end up saying that a rights base ethical system doesn't have flaws, is to remain blind to arguments made on the Utilitarian side, of where you calculate outcomes. Reducing everything to being ok to choice, ends up denying that a situation where choices made have bad results. Is a system where you make individual and collectively bad choices, with worst outcomes than one where better outcomes are bad superior to the one with better outcomes? Can you argue for this? Hey, we had the freedom to choose, and we all died is superior to one where someone interupted the situation and imposed one with better outcomes and they came to pass? Would you argue this?
