JoeyKnothead wrote: ↑Thu Mar 09, 2023 4:05 pm
I agree there can - and should be - permissible harms, but harms they are, if only philosophically.
Understanding that should cause us to pause before invoking those 'righteous' harms. Which I think most folks try to do. (Don't ask for math I ain't got
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I don't believe in some sort of perfect knife, the composition and structure of which is just so, so that when murder is committed with this knife, it's morally permissible.
That's why I must add the potentially case destroying caveat to my theory of agreement that it must be a fair agreement, and not benefit one party at the expense of the other, or even benefit the other party so vastly much less that it ends up being a handicap.
If you and I agree that we each may not kill the other except with a kris knife forged by a Japanese swordsmith, and I have one and you don't, that's a foul. In practice I've either deceived you or twisted your arm, and that's not a real agreement. And in the edge case that you've really just gone insane, and truly believe that this is moral and perfect knives do exist, I'm still calling it a foul because I have to for the theory to work.
So here's how righteous harms exist in my theory.
If I want a goat and you want a dog, and we both agreed no goats but yes dogs, that's unfair to me and thus that agreement fails the test. If I've been a fool and made a bad agreement, that doesn't entitle people to trample me. You can have snakeworld, where deception is king, but it has to benefit everyone. Frankly I don't see that happening but that doesn't mean it can't.
If we both agreed no pets that bother the other, well, that's a different story. We're both going to be miserable living in that jail which we made for ourselves. But good news: Since all it is, is a mutual agreement, we can also agree to nullify it. But this can't be one-sided either, so yes, you could have people trapped in misery, but this misery again must be mutual. If one person is living it up and one is miserable then it was not a fair agreement in the first place, and it fails.
Full power to buyer's remorse, at least in the fact that selling a sugar addict a doughnut for $10,000 and then saying too bad no backsies is not something you may do in a state of nature. In a state of nature if he finds you've ruined him he may hit you until you return his fortune, and if you make your way ruining people this is likely to happen. If you want your morality to override that state of nature, he must not only agree, but actually benefit too. Arguably with property and commerce rights that is the case, but that's why a fair agreement to property rights does not include addictive substances that wreck judgment, nor anything else where the law protects one person as he ruins another, simply because his knife is shaped differently. In nature the answer to a scam is a fist, so a fair society must punish scams if it punishes fists. Protecting one and punishing the other isn't more civilised; it's just a form of survival-strategy-based classism and slavery. We would see this more easily if society favoured the brute, saying yes to fists but punishing the clever for fighting back with deception.
Thus a a righteous harm must be something the harmed party actually benefits from and agreed to: He must benefit enough from the system that permits the harm that it offsets the harm, and even if we think he does, that doesn't mean he has to agree. If he's just being obstinate and we can show how he benefits more, even then he's only on the hook if he genuinely agreed to it. (I do argue that every time a Libertarian has called the police or taken welfare or unemployment or a bailout and willingly petitioned for the benefits of society, that constitutes agreement, or at least, it should, because if the government isn't requiring that then it's not fair to the rest of us.)
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