hernan

I recommend that you start a new thread, probably in politics, to explore the approach you recommend. Obviously I remain most skeptical on a number of levels.

This is well trod ground that is litered with martyrs, innocent victims, and record of failure with only a smattering of qualified success. It doesn't strike me as a very rational choice.

As with the previous thread, that is an option that I would prefer to keep off the table for a number of reasons. I believe that there are far more moderate options to explore and any problems with the moderate option (aside from being too moderate) will manifest in that more radical option. However, it's worth touching on this option in relation to the issue of the relationship between rule of law, power, and honesty. One can think of government power as a moral high ground. Whoever occupies that high ground gets to openly practice their principles. Everyone else is faced with less attractive options, some of which we've discussed. The natural reaction of those who wish to open and honestly practice their principles is to fight to seize that high ground, either through the machinery of politics or by other means. This is seldom a satisfying choice but it is the dominant mentality. The question may be posed this way: Is this mental disposition toward fighting for this moral high ground a reflection of reality or is it a common misconception? I am exploring the second possibility here.

I don't really find much here to disagree with. This is all well and good questions but I don't think they really bring us closer to solving the problem I am posing here in this thread. Obviously it is a Good Thing to check your moral principles and even to allow some tolerance for disagreements with others on moral issues. The question is whether, or at what point, such tolerance is stretched to the point that you can be said to have abandoned your moral principles and what are the consequences either way. And here lies one of the core issues. (I say one because there are others.) Suppose, for example, that a law was passed that you thought was absurd but it was not a great burden. Would it be immoral to follow the law? Or, to put it another way, is there a moral principle that would lead us to following an immoral law? Naturally democratic principles are such but I'm assuming that there won't be many fans of that here. Another is tolerance, which is more to my liking; I will tolerate a certain amount of interference from others. And still another is simple calculations of survival; there is no moral compunction to throw oneself into the maw of the beast. Also, some will make a distinction between following an immoral law that is harmful to ourselves and following an immoral law that is harmful to others, a variation on tolerance (it's very easy to tolerate a law that harms others).

That's certainliy one way to look at it. That's the path that leads to pacifism and submission to power. There are certainliy many who will argue for that approach.

I'm merely observing that the two are in conflict and exploring the consequences of that. I'm not sure that either is pitting itself against the other as much as that they are different animals that do not get along. Well, that is a very good question but, in reality, it's probably more often the case that either you are a man of principle or you are a follower of the law. There are many, though, who profess principles as a political opinion but otherwise surrender to the law. And that's not an absurd choice, that is what democracy teaches we should do. Let me clarify: living by principles that are illegal requires living in a gray zone in which you can be honorable with some but not others. This has important consequences one of which is that there will be situations where you cannot be as honest as you would prefer. Well, the "ideal world" is obviously not the real world, it is an ideal, a mental image of what we would like the world to be. The ideal world is not bounded by any laws of physics or human nature. It is a wish, an aspiration. The real world, of course, is that which we inhabit and about which we complain. There is one reality but we are able to reason beyond reality to possibility, however flawed that reasoning might be. This is the problem with life in the gray zone. Now sometimes the divisions are clear cut (e.g. a soldier's uniform) but they will not always be so (e.g. a spy). Sometimes that is certainly true, but not in general (depending on how you define emotion). For example, my desire for food arises from my hunger, an anatomical response to my body's needs that long precedes the development of the brain and what we would call reason.

You both make some great points that are back toward where I'd like to take this discussion. Turst is earned? it can be. Specifically we can act in ways that earn the trust of others. We can be trustworthy. We can be men of our word and earn a reputation for honesty, for honor. But can we we men of our word to some and not others? I claim so and this is crucial in the situation (that we all agree we are in) where law and principle are inconsistent if not in conflict. I claim further that we observe this all the time in what I call factional trust: being trustworthy among your faction but not so outside it. This is never the ideal as it always greats a gray zone of ambiguity but in the real world one has to choose between surrendering principle to law or living with the gray zone that comes with living principle in spite of the law. Trust is an emotional estimation? Reasoning, in general, is far more emotional than most rationalists allow. Or, to put it another way, there is no hard wall between emotion and reason, though we can always point to examples of surrendering reason to emotion. It's thus the case that trust has a natural component: we trust some naturaly (e.g. those who are good to us) and distrust others (e.g. those who harm us). This obviously lends support to factional trust. We could certainly argue, as in the previous thread, about distinctions between trust in nature and trust in humans. But as there, I will argue that this is not so important as it might seem at first. While there are certainly simple examples where we can have great confidene (e.g. math or basic laws of physics), most of life is quite complex and unpredictable even before we throw humans into the mix. In all cases we are attempting to make decisions based on the information available to us, which almost always falls well short of what is needed for certanty. The rule of law is a long-standing trational solution to the problem of trust and so pitting principle against law is not without consequences. If I follow the law I am more assured of how my life will unfold. So it's naturally very tempting to surrender principle to law, to conform to culture and society, to go with the flow.

Actually, I think there are many methods for judging trustworthness, among which is knowing another's principles. In the simplest form, the question (particularly as I defined honor), is a matter of acurately predicting another's choices in given situations. Obviously a principled person will be so directed. But equally obvious, someone who, as a matter of principle or simply out of fear, conforms to the law will not be someone to trust in the distopia you described. On the other hand, such a person can be trust to, for example, drive on the appropriate side of the road.

Would you distrust fellow Objectivists in that distopia? I'm not claiming that trust in that situation would be easy or total but even in the worst situation there is always the opportunity find like-minded individuals.

I'm going to pass on this simply because it recovers ground we already covered in the previous thread and I want to focus on something else here. It's not that I don't think you make some interesting or even relevant points. Well, I was careful not to say "subjective". For our purposes here it is sufficient to note that law and principle, as you define it or even more generally, do not generally coincide. Let us assume that each person has made at least some effort to establish that his principles are true but that, for whatever reason, the law is inconsistent with your principles (and probably with many others as well). Also, I don't want to repeat here all the discussion of the previous thread but rather to focus on the more narrow issue of trust in a world, which we both seem to agree this one is, where laws and principles conflict. Can you trust someone who does not conform to your principles? Can you be trustworthy when your principles are illegal?

Right. Rule of law means, simply, following the law or, more generally, a rule following society. It says nothing about the nature of the laws being followed but much about a conformance to a shared set of rules. Principle, on the other hand, is primarily personal. Now in an ideal world the law would conform to principle but that's not the world we live in. That brings us to the question that I raised in the previous thread but which is obviously related to this thread: what to do when rules and principles conflict. Now obviously here we are primarily talking about Objectivist principles but I might as well put on the table that not everyone shares those principles and thus you have the additional issue of a conflict of principles.

Good example. Really? I trust the president (or any head of state, for that matter) to keep hew generally close to constitutional law but not to act stricly within it. There are plenty of dramatic and droll examples to the contrary. One might make a distinction between obeying the courts and the constitution and there I would expect most nations that have a track record of rule of law to do better but this is complicated by the governmental nature and role of the judiciary itself. This brings us toward one of the lines of thought here: rule of law vs. principle. What I have argued (loosly speaking), is that the two are orthogonal. It is perfectly possible for someone to act lawfully, literally in accordance with the law, while violating rights, insofar as rights are seperately established principles. (Obviously if you hold that governement defines right then this makes no sense; by definition government can do no wrong.)

Well, as I said to Nicky, I'm not unsympathetic to your qualms over the definition of honor I gave but I'm assuming your not just complaining about that but that you're making a more substantive criticism. Some evidence, or at least some examples, would help explain your position. I have given some examples already but they were mostly hypotheticals designed to draw out the issues. Let me now offer more practical reasons for aligning theory with reality. Let us suppose that I encounter a criminial gang. Can I rely on their lack of honor to inhibit their ability to act together against me? Probably not. This applies even more in the case of a government that is violating my rights. There is every reason to expect that they are quite capable of maintaining trust within their organization. On the other hand, can I trust only those who act on the basis of the "right" principles? Or is it reasonble to trust others more generally? My experience is that trustworthiness is quite possible among those who do not, for example, hold Objectivist principles. Trust is an important topic and getting it right is thus important.

No, you are confusing a definition of terms with a logical fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-refuting_idea#Indirectly_self-denying_statements_or_.22fallacy_of_the_stolen_concept.22

I'm not sure this is a very useful distinction. In any case, I gave an operational definition of honor in the OP. I can certainly appreciate that you might take issue with that definition but that would really be distraction from the point. Slavery is certainly an example of that. But so is nationalism or tribalism or classism, all of which were previously cited. Setting aside your unease with my definition of honor, people of one nation or tribe or even class seem quite capable of acting honorbly toward each other. That's precisely the question (albeit an extreme version of it). Is it really reasonable to conflate how a kidnapper treats the victim with how he treats his fellow kidnappers or, more ordinarily, is it reasonable to rely on other means of determining trust. Note that if your claim is true then honor is purely a function of power. If you have power then you can operate openly and honorably. If you do not then you can only act honorably by submitting to those in power. Honor, then, becomes a function of power.

I think you are mostly agreeing with me here. But let's consider this further: even though the kidnappers have (for the reasons you cited) little incentive to be honorable toward their victims, they have some incentive to be honorable among themselves. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this is a kidnapping ring that has some success in its methods, then they need to work together to put bread on their table. If they are dishonest toward one another then the kidnapping ring breaks down. So there we have honor among kidnappers. Indeed, it is really power that is key here. A crime syndicate has more power than a kidnapping ring but less than a government. It can be semi-open but it must maintain at least a fig leaf of secrecy even if it has corrupted the local police. What makes government special is that it is the most powerful institution in any given location. It can, therefore, operate openly and honorably even as it violates the rights of its citizens. It can openly favor one class over another, e.g. openly bilking the rich. Everyone knows what to expect from it and nobody is surprised by what it does. It can make and keep promises and expect those promises to be trusted. All other institutions have to choose between submission to the government or operating less openly. But as we saw with the kidnapppers, that doesn't mean that such institutions cannot be honorable among themselves. And, too, goverments may choose to be honorable only to their favored factions. It may well be that the favored faction has every good reason to trust the government while the disfavored factions never know what they will be hit with next (even if they know at any given moment what the bill is). Today you are required to report to detention camps. Tomorrow? Who knows.

Here is now taxes typically work: The authorities set a rate and mechanism by which you estimate your taxes and pay them (or someone else does, e.g. the merchant in the case of sales tax). The promise is two-fold: if you pay the demanded amount, you are left alone. If you don't, bad things happen to you. Now contrast this with an extortionist. A kidnaper might say, give me $1M and we will deliver your son back to you alive. Is that a promise you can rely on? Probably not. In the middle, we might have an organized crime syndicate that promises nothing will happen to your shop if you pay protection money. That's probably a more reliable promise than a random kidnaper but not as reliable as a government taxman.

Of course, though, the trustworthiness of the promise is not dependent upon the use of the monies collected, though one would certainly expect the amount demanded to be much lower in the case you describe.

But the tax authorities have never promised an end to taxes so there is no breach of trust there, only that any given tax payment will satisfy for the given span of time. That is, generally speaking, a perfectly trustworthy promise. Yes, this is intentional because part of the question relates to what is the proper use of the term theft or criminality. (I don't mean to go off on a tangent on lawful rights violations but, rather, to investigate the question of whether it makes sense to distinguish unlawful from lawful rights violations.)

This is a followup to another thread (Free Markets are for Sissies). The question I want to pose here is whether or not there can be honor among thieves and, conversely, whether it can be said that those who have honor are thieves. By "honor" I mean trustworthiness, the ability to cooperate toward shared goals without backstabbing. If the answer is "no", then theives are at a perpetual disadvantage to the honorable and there are practical benefits to being trustworthy and discerning correctly who to trust. In this case, those who act honorably with one another can undertake ventures that require trust and cooperation whether that be marriage or a corporation or a country. But there is another possibility: that honor is factional. In this case, it might be perfectly feasible to steal from "others" while retaining trust among "ourselves". The classic examples here is the tribe and nation-state which conquers its neighbors but provides for its own. More interestingly, you have the situation of governments that prey on one class of citizens on behalf of another. Regarding the second question, it is often said, and I have heard it argued in these forums, that there is no moral or practical difference between taxation and extortion. But there is one practical difference: you know the tax rates at any given time. There is no such assurance that any payment to an extortionist will satisfy his demands. To pose the question in a most practical way: are there advantages to doing business or otherwise relating to fellow Objectivists beyond that available to a group of socialists? Or are there prehaps organizational advantages available to socialists that Objectivists eschew (e.g. the willingness to bond by force)?

I would give a qualified "yes". Yes, in the formal sense that what I propose is not contradictory to Objectivist principles. But the qualification is that it's a radical departure from normal Objectivism insofar as it is about acting against socialism and not arguing and persuading socialists to change their mind. A closely related problem is that the language that Objectivism utilizes reinforces this bias toward argument and persuasion over action.

Right, but the question we are confronting in this tangent is whether humans have the same understanding of biology as lions and, if so, whether they are thus capable of acting on motivations other than ideas. In a nutshell, we are comparing two competing theories. Rand's theory is that reason (motivation by ideas) superceded animal motivations. My claim is that it merely added a layer over them. We have a capacity that the lions lack but we still have the lion's motivations. Rand's man qua man is an ideal, at best. (And Branden had some strong words to say on that.)

I think that much of what we see in the world, both criminal and governmental, is not much more rational than that.

I never said I agreed with everything Rand said. I argue based on what I know, not on what I know of Rand.