Thought Experiment

[[DHT]Osiris]

The body politic makes decisions based upon the perceived threat or benefit to a nation as a whole, which then requires action and is enforced by the state.

The individual makes decisions based purely upon personal choice.

Isn't that just an attempt to divorce your choice from the result though? If I vote for war, and if war happens as a result of mine (and others') votes as opposed to a council or something, then by definition my personal decision affected the result (people getting killed). A society is just a group of people working together, and together personal choices make the decisions of the greater unit.

Note that the above is considering choice -> result correlation. If it's a representative democracy that may not always take place, and the further you abstract the less this becomes relevant/applicable. Voting for a person who puts something in to law that will definitely kill people probably wouldn't qualify as pulling the trigger yourself, unless you voted them in based on that specific thing.

 

[gill77]

Found a tweet regarding today's shooting. Similar "logic".

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Y'know, I wonder about that. I think it's possible, even likely, that we can end up trapped in a maze of Hobson's choices when things get bad enough. In other words, there's no good or correct moral choice, there's just bad, really bad, and even worse ones. What a mess.

 

[fenrir]

@interchange: actually i'm almost (like within $100 of being) below the federal poverty line and still give about 30% of my after tax income to a human trafficking survivor friend of mine. So that line actually would work on most of the people who would post this sort of thing, but not me. Nice try though! I know, it's like meeting a truly poor priest or a Buddhist monk who actually only does own a bowl and a robe.

So, by choosing to use that money to save a single person, you ignored the fact that you could have saved multiple people with the same amount money. The argument Interchange made is still valid and applies to you.

 

[Azuma Hazuki]

Au contraire...there's so little of it to go around I wouldn't be able to usefully help multiple people in that situation. Believe me, I've spent a lot of time ruminating over this...