I don't think it is that simple.

A lot of psychopathic behavior can be directly linked to abuses people have endured when they were children, for example.

It's fine, you can doubt this. I've personally experienced this and I make that link when I hear the description of others but neither us have direct access to their mental states; we only have direct access to our own. Especially when I was a moral nihilist in my teens I would just do things because "fuck it" - there was no standard of morality present that I could even ever meaningfully violate.

I do believe that the vast majority of men, in their hearts, know that certain things are absolutely wrong but they just choose to ignore it or deliberately violate it.

I'm well aware that abuse and maltreatment plays a huge role, but ultimately one's troubles are their own.

But he too derived sexual pleasure from his acts, leading us back to the person always pursuing what they think benefit them and deluded perception.

Why is that a deluded perception? It did benefit him. He got off, sexually.

I can respond to the rest later if need be, I just want to focus the discussion.

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that article. I enjoy reading Kissinger, his book Diplomacy is one of - if not the greatest - work on the history of diplomacy ever written.

There's a lot I could respond to in your post. I'll just focus on the last question to keep things focused.

My point here is that I’m looking at the idea of power figures within a democratic process. Can they achieve things in that system, does it work against them, and can they destroy and usurp it?

Democracy can absolutely be destroyed and usurped. In the case of Hitler he took power through democratic means, but he used the Constitution to basically exploit a loophole and placed Germany in a state or emergency or a "state of exception" if we're going by the German translation from 1933-1945. There are plenty of other examples throughout history but this one strikes me probably the most blatant in modern memory. Hitler basically hacked Democracy.

There's plenty of other examples. If an activist judge doesn't consider or isn't concerned with legal precedent in establishing their rulings and instead pass down a ruling based on personal judgment or beliefs I think that's basically an act of power.

Putin and Medvedev switch on and off between President and Prime Minister because of some rule on term limits intended to curb the use of individual power but they've found a way to get around it and are now just working on changing that law.

I would generally say that "power" involves going outside of codified institutional norms and this can still be accomplished in a democracy because those rules can either be hacked or worked around or interpreted strangely so we always need to be on guard for this.

EDIT: In terms of declaring a "state of emergency" or a "state of exception" it's a difficult area because it seems to escape legal precedent or established procedures.... It's not a matter of whether there's "really" a threat facing us, only that a threat is perceived. Someone could declare a state of emergency on account of climate change if that clause was still in a Constitution. With Hitler, if it wasn't the Communists it could have been the Jews or bolshevist cosmopolitanism or whatever. If you don't recognize the threat that's on you.

Such as?

Other motivations or drives would be jealousy, hate, a sexual motive, or just the implicit recognition that the life of the victim doesn't matter and that murder could be convenient. I honestly believe the choice to murder in some cases is essentially just someone saying "fuck it" to the universe and moral instruction. I honestly believe that to be the case. They are choosing to turn their back on that. I have had this thought process but obviously on a much smaller scale.

Don't you find it telling that you need to go to the extremest of examples in order to find a fault in my argument?

Most psychologically healthy people conduct their lives in a way that they pursue what they believe to be best for them. However, we are talk about evil here. Lately I have seen a number of interviews from convicted murderers so if you want to talk about evil that seems like a good resource. Most of us just don't encounter evil in everyday, civilized life.... so yes, on some level I am talk about "the exception."

I do think it's a grave mistake to chalk up all evil to ignorance. It would imply to me that you could sit in front of, say, Ted Bundy and explain to him "well if only you knew the wonders of Philosophy and...."

What’s the point of the strength and autonomy of the individual if power isn’t going to be part of it. If individuals can’t rise up through the masses, to aspire to all sorts of unknown potential, then what’s the point of believing in the individual.

I think we can both agree that it is reasonable to be fearful of power. It is also reasonable to fearful of very large power imbalances.

Centralized power residing in, say, a government or a tribe can work out well especially in times of war.That's not really in dispute. But there is always an enormous risk inherent in that. What happens after the threat is gone? What happens after the reforms have been done? Who is there to check them?

There's nothing wrong with people seeking, say, positions of power insofar as they wish to govern fairly and recognize that their actions have serious consequences. If someone is just seeking power for the sake of imposing their will that person is dangerous and not ready to lead.

This is not about Trump but about power and whether we should look at how it works more closely and overcome our fear of it, about whether power can be wielded morally or whether there are benefits in the idea of power.

Good OP - broad topic. There's a lot we can say about power.

The older I get the more I tend to see power as something personal, or more like the assertion of one's personal will over, say, systemic rules or procedure. A very clear example of this would be when Hitler declared a state of emergency upon being elected and suspended the Constitution because there was some supposed existential threat facing the state and in turn he destroyed the institutional, democratic procedures present under the Weimar Republic that would have constrained executive power.

It can also be more crafty and subtle, like when FDR interpreted the neutrality acts in kind of his own personal, unusual way to allow the US to fund China against Japanese aggression by not defining the conflict as a "war." Here FDR didn't destroy the system like Hitler did, but his interpretation of the neutrality acts was basically just him pushing his agenda within a democracy.

It's important not to confuse "power" with simply it's enforcement. For instance, in the US military an enlisted member is required to salute an officer. If he does not, the officer is required to reprimand him. An outsider might see an officer reprimanding an enlisted individual and see it as the officer imposing power, when the officer in reality is required by procedure to do what he is doing. No one is free in this interaction.

Centralized power is always something to be feared, at least on some level. The more centralized and powerful it is the more you should fear it.

Feel free to get a discussion going here and offer your feedback or ask something else. There wasn't much I staunchly disagreed with in your OP so I just thought I'd add a few points.

If, in that moment, he was not convinced his actions would be good for him, why would he have committed his crime?

Glad you asked: I've seen plenty of interviews with murderers and these explanations a couple of the more recent ones were "my mind blanked" and "I just did it" or claiming to be scared or surprised... I believe it's rage in some them and for the very worse they derive enormous pleasure is causing people pain but I haven't too many interviews with these tier of killer. The explanations are varied. One of the last interviews I watched I'd guess the guy had an IQ of around 75 and at that level it just seems like they don't do very much thinking in general. Neither of us inhabit that worldview of having an IQ of like 70-75.

I've only heard a few say that their action was good. Of course an action could be beneficial for someone (say, if they rob and murder someone), but most murderers won't think that action is Good. If a criminal genuinely cannot tell the difference between right and wrong he could plead the insanity defense.

If you're interested there's an interview with Richard Kuklinski on youtube and plenty of material about Ted Bundy on netflix recently.

Why couldn't a serial killer be guided by a flawed perception?

Okay, lets be clear here:
-Everybody has flawed perceptions.
-By "guided" I'm taking that term to be motivated... some killers do seem to be guided by flawed perceptions, but this isn't the case for all of them. In the case of a more evil killer he might sexually get off to his action and he just doesn't care about his victim. That's his motivation - not a flawed perception.

The person you describe doesn't seem like a happy person, nor does he seem to make decisions that would turn him into one. It seems to me he is hopelessly lost.

It's okay to call him "lost" but I would also call him evil.

I am, however, making an educated guess that the persons you describe are unhappy people. I also think I'm correct in that regard.

This is fair to say in, I think the vast majority of cases. I sometimes wonder about Ted Bundy though who was just a severe narcisisst.

It seems like you interpreted the quote I shared earlier as 'every person desires to be a morally good person', but that is not what the quote says and not how I explained it.

Would you care to explain it again? Is it just every person does what they perceive to be good for themselves?

In sum, I'm just saying it's just not right to let rationality (or someone lack of) take center stage when other motivations or drives of action take a much bigger role. I feel like this is such a "philosophy" thing to do - to let rationality take center stage especially when it comes to motivation which is much broader. I feel like we should first and foremost be considering the evidence and then maybe consider the dead 2000+ year old philosopher. Not the other way around. America has a very, very comprehensive body of knowledge when it comes to killers and especially serial killers.

Did the fellow not have some desire to do all those things, thinking it must make him wealthier/happier, etc? Was he not ignorant of the fact that none of his actions contributed to his happiness?

I don't know his exact brain state at the time of the killing. I don't know. He murdered his own grandmother with a baseball bat.... I think it was over $300 which he used to get high. I suppose it's possible he could have been thinking "I am doing this in pursuit of the Good" but I think that's extremely unlikely in view of other factors.

I just don't find it helpful at all to be like "oh well if he only knew eudamonia or whatever or was aware of the existence of, I don't know, higher pleasures.... I'm sorry but it's just babble.

Read about Carl Panzram if you want serious psychological insight into a sadistic serial killer. He wrote a book detailing his thoughts. The man fundamentally hated humanity. He hated the universe and he had a deep-seeded rage. Understanding this misanthropy and rage will take you much further in terms of understanding evil than someone misunderstanding rationality.

I also think it's very questionable to give any sort of universal prescription for what 'happiness' amounts to as if it were just the same for every human being.

The problem is that people's perceptions are hopelessly deluded, ....

The guy knew exactly what he was doing. Not all evil is the result of ignorance.

In the words of Plato; All men desire the Good.

Yesterday I was watching a true crime documentary where a man, after a history of robbing gas stations and stealing from money from his family, beat his loving 80 year old grandmother to death with a baseball bat because she wouldn't give him more money for drugs and then he baldly lied and blamed it on his friend for years.

He wasn't mentally ill and he seemed of at least average intelligence. He mentioned that while he was stealing and robbing gas stations that he will well aware of the path he was going down and continued.

I use to think what you thought.

No they're not. If I held a gun to your head and said "build me a house" I suspect you would do so, regardless of whether the market demanded it. You're treating 'market forces' as if they were some kind of Law of Nature, they're just the result of the economic institutions we've set up. It's perfectly feasible to build houses for all sorts of reasons.

Yes, but this isn't how houses get built in a free society. If you're putting a gun to someone's head or threatening construction crews with jail time you're pretty screwed as a society.

I didn't say you couldn't have an opinion. You've got to realise the gravity of what you're suggesting. There's a man on the street living under a cardboard box - no home, no job, no healthcare. He's starving hungry, probably ill (both physically and mentally) and ten times more likely to die than average. You're telling him that he can't have a little help from the man buying his second yacht because you 'reckon' in your completely lay interpretation of complex economics, that it would probably be a bad idea in the long run. This despite there existing perfectly well-educated experts who think it would be fine. You've decided to just let the man starve and side with the naysayers because you just 'reckon' they have it right. I'm trying to establish why - given that you're not sufficiently expert to decide, given that alternative , expert opinions are available, given the very high stakes, you've chosen the side you have.

I mean, if you're wrong (and we do nothing), people suffer miserably for no reason. If you're right, but we increase welfare nonetheless, the economy takes a dive (which is does periodically anyway). given that either could be the case, why err on the side of the wealthy?

This really gets to the heart of the matter in your view, and I'm glad you're laying it out it out on the table. I'm being serious here: I like that you're laying it out on the table and in direct way.

If you're just going to point to this man in the cardboard box and say "how could society allow this? "How dare you ignore this in a wealthy society such as the US!" then I don't know if I have an immediate rebuttal to your appeal. You're declaring something an emergency and emergencies shouldn't be questioned they should be solved.

It seems a human rights issue that the government must immediately save them and provide them with hot meals 3x a day + a warm shower and continued maintenance to ensure their house is a-ok and throw in food, support whatever children they have, I mean why not it's for the well-fare of society and billionaires and millionaires have plenty of money.

I'm guessing you're young. I would guess between 18-22, maybe 23.

In reality - and I know you're not to listen because this man's existence constitutes an immediate emergency that must be solved by whatever means necessary - the issue is much, much complex. We need to ask ourselves a number of questions:

1. Why is this man homeless? Where is his family? Why isn't his family accepting him?
2. Is he a drug user? Will he be able to function around other homeless people without being a danger to them?
3. Does he have any pertinent mental health issues that may make him for the time being unfit to live around others?
4. Can he be trusted to keep a home clean and maintain it? Does he have a criminal history?
5. Has he chosen to live on the street because of the freedom it provides and the panhandling opportunities that come with it?
6. What is his previous experience with homeless shelters? What is his previous living history?

I know it sounds cruel, but ask yourself this: Would you take him in? If you worked hard to finally own a house would you trust a few homeless people in your house or would you be okay leaving them unsupervised? If you wouldn't take the risk, is it fair to ask a community to take the same risk?

I don't understand your appeal to autonomy in this one area.

I don't really feel like arguing this one. If you're comparing having to pay for groceries with forcing people into manual labor there isn't a point in me going on about this point and we can drop it. I'm just glad that you're honest about the implications of your argument and you're able to accept the honest consequences. Cool beans - no need for a response here.

no, i go by the majority, straight-forward view described in the stanford article you linked. this is going to me my last post before i go to bed, by the way.

i suspect that religious, law-bound morality and virtue ethics are actually compatible to an extent; they occupy different territory. law-bound religious morality dictates in absolute rules, while virtue theory only seeks to mold people into decent individuals with good moral character. i think anscombe is trying to promote virtue ethics and its development and can do so without it impugning her own religious views.

on the other hand, one can not be a utilitarian or a kantian and a religious christian.... not a serious one, at least.

That's the modus tollens reading. While you may be right - she is obtuse enough to have argued in favour of law-bound morality by on the face of it arguing against it - I think we need to get the modus ponens reading right before we give this more consideration.

just to clarify, if by "law-bound morality" we're referencing that kind of "thou shalt not" morality which has its roots in the old testament then she is definitely not rejecting that. i'm familiar with her theological work and she is definitely not rejecting that. she probably only rejects their secular manifestations.

I read her as rejecting law-bound morality in favour of developing virtue. SO the attack - pp. 2-3 - her antecedents is an attack on the very notion of doing ethics by examining what is good; the section you cite is arguing that "should," "needs," "ought," "must" have been taken out of their usual place in our discourse and forced into an unnatural alliance with words such as "obligation"... And again this harks back to Wittgenstein's warnings about philosophers using words in peculiar ways.

yes, she does reject secular moral systems like utilitarianism and kantian deontology, but she is a catholic so I don't think she rejects all law-bound morality because that would include biblical morality. it's been years since i've read this essay but i remember gleaning it from it that the greeks (originators of virtue ethics) considered the project of morality in a much different sense than later thinkers like kant or mill or like how we consider it today. morality was more about cultivating the right virtue and finding, say, the golden mean between cowardice and rash action in regard to bravery. the greeks held a teleological worldview which christian thinkers would incorporate quite nicely into christian thought in the middle ages.

I always interpreted that teeth-mashing quote you mentioned earlier as just the disjointment in the way ethics was discussed between these two eras (greeks versus modern conception) but my reading could be wrong and again... it's been like a decade.

You're not an expert on these matters, neither am I. So it's absolutely pointless us trying to work out if there are undesirable consequences, or if they outweigh the desirable ones.

So you can't have an opinion on an issue unless you're an expert in it. Okay.

Our job as citizens is not to bash out the evidence (we don't have all the data) it's to decide what to do in the face of the uncertainty.

You're flying in the face of modern philosophy and science here: One of the key premises is that anyone is able to bring evidence and doubts, and that truth doesn't just lie in an appeal to experts.

And why would I? All you've presented is the distinction. No argument at all about why that distinction matters.

Lets start with the duty/slavery idea I mentioned earlier. In the right to life, your duty is just not to kill others. In the right to housing and everything along with it, your duty is now to take care of everyone's home. What if you don't want to? What if you're the only mechanic for miles?

This is just on the practical part, I'll respond to the rest later:

Yes, but there's no shortage of housing which means presumably there's no shortage of people who've chosen to build houses of their own free will. If suddenly no one wants to build houses then we might all have to muck in, but so far there's no evidence that this might be a problem, so why even raise the issue?

Construction functions in regard to market conditions. Houses don't just spring up spontaneously they are built according to demand.

Pfforest mentioned that there was no shortage of homes nation-wide. He mentioned that there were more homes than there are homeless people. This is probably true. The obvious wrench in the plan of putting the homeless in these homes is that these homes are probably owned by somebody. All of the land in the US has been claimed - it is owned by somebody, and very often but not always the owner of the land is the owner of the property. At the very least the land belongs to someone.

It's just not the case that there are open pastures of free, unoccupied and unowned homes out there. If this happened to be the case then I don't really care if homeless people decided to homestead in them. However, the local community probably would because it would plummet their home prices and they'd be faced with a ton of new domestic issues due to this influex of the homeless.

I'm not talking about shelters, I'm talking about housing (and jobs, and decent wages and healthcare etc).

So what are they entitled to? A dorm? A house? Plenty of homeless are either rejected from the shelters due to drugs/mental health or just refuse to live there in the first place because they have to be around other homeless people who, surprise surprise, aren't the most pleasant crowd. What is your solution to these people?

And in another installment of the never ending argument....

Why don't they have a choice in it? Where did I suggest we get slave labour to build houses?

Because rights entail duties. A duty must be fulfilled.

The right to housing or warm water or ventilation or heating entails that there must be someone to do that work, unless you want to add the exception "unless they don't want to."

So which one is it. If you want to add that qualification it's now just a matter of free choice.

There's all sorts of qualifications we can put on rights without abandoning them.

Yeah and we all have a right to a ferrari assuming we can afford one.

You do realize that we have homeless shelters?

No, the topic is 'small government'.

I realize that's the topic of the thread but the topic of our conversation is the nature of rights. We were focusing on housing and sufficient income, but last post you brought up like 8 other different rights that may or may not exist. I'm happy to discuss them individually when I have the time, but we're still sort of on this topic because I feel there's a disconnect.

you cannot simply dismiss these claims on the basis of a simple philosophical position, you're now having to demonstrate that each claim is unsustainable on its own merits.

This is a perfectly valid way to go out it, if you're going to pitch an idea I'm going to try to press you for specifics and when you can't provide those specifics or the details result in undesirable consequences that makes everything worse then maybe, just maybe, you should take that into consideration.

The point is that you've agreed these claims are not denied the status of 'rights' on some categorical philosophical basis.

My go-to argument is concrete examples because it's more straight-forward. I have presented a philosophical distinction between positive and negative rights but you didn't really care. Nonetheless, I'd say that the "duties/slavery" argument that I'm presenting now is a little more abstract in that it's not dealing strictly with implementation.

We agreed that harm to society resulting from satisfying these claims is the only reason to dismiss them. Seeing as the harm to society these claims may cause is still a moot point among experts, that should be the end of it.

When you place the material well-being of society above fairness or free choice you will fail.

This essay is one of my favorites in moral philosophy but it's been years since I've read it. I'm not a catholic - I don't agree with Anscombe on everything - but man that woman was sharp. I highly recommend Human Life, Action, and Ethics which is a compilation of her essays on a variety of topics. I'm pretty sure diving into Anscombe was what boosted my philosophy GPA by like a full number.

I'd be happy to discuss the essay although it's been some time since I've read it and she makes multiple different point throughout the essay. If I remember correctly this paper had a hand in the revival of virtue ethics.

but my point is that at this time there not being enough homes to go around isn’t a problem. There are more than enough homes to go around, if only their ownership were somehow distributed differently.

Yeah, the issue is complicated. I do feel bad for the homeless. Ultimately, though, if a home belongs to someone then the homeless can't just have free-range on it. We also need to keep in mind that drug addiction and mental health issues are rife among the homeless and shelters will turn people away who aren't clean or safe to be around. It's just a very tough issue. Would you be willing to let the homeless into your home? Would you trust them when you're not around?

To go back to basics, what concerns me is that someone needs to build those homes, manage those homes, HVAC.... and they don't have a choice in it. This is fundamentally different than just not killing someone. If someone has a right to a home that home must be built. Similarly, for upkeep, maintenance workers basically become slaves... the task must be done and ideally done as soon as possible. Additionally I asked you earlier how much home these people are entitled to.... a dorm-style room with the essentials or the average house which costs around $225k in the US? Or something more expensive for all the troubles these people have been to? A dormitory style home runs into difficulty when you consider that many of the homeless are drug users and not mentally stable so they would be difficult neighbors. Unsupervised, these places probably turn into drug dens. Supervised - we have to turn people away. The problems balloon if we're now going to provide every homeless person with their own average American house.

But these are taking extremes. The right to clean air, clean water, good working conditions, freedom from abuse, a decent wage, freedom from discrimination, an education. None of these things have even the slightest evidence that they'll end civilisation, so why shouldn't we allow them as claims?

We're bouncing around too much here. You bring up a lotttt of issues here which each could warrant their own debate.

I'd just like to stick to the topic. We were talking about housing and "sufficient wage."

There are more unoccupied houses than homeless people in the US.

Ok, but who owns these homes? You can't give homeless people a home that someone has just left for a few months to go on vacation. It's still theirs.

Also, if the principle were that everyone were entitled to an equal-ish share of what is available, and too many people stopped producing as a consequence of that, then how much is available to be shared would go down, as would the size of an equal share of that, which would then incentivize people to work more again.

We're getting way ahead of ourselves here: When you say entitled to an equal-ish share are you talking about land appropriation? If I'm imaging this correctly this seems to be saying we're just fleecing millionaires and billionaires. Am I getting you right or no?

Earlier on in the thread you mentioned the right to sufficient income. If everyone is given a house and a sufficient income just as a matter of right then you've destroyed the incentive to work for a lot of people. Sure, civilization can survive with a few parasite but if everyone is incentivized to become one then the system collapses.

There are, however, plenty enough houses. If everyone claimed a house, everyone would have a house. I don't see any evidence at all of immanent civilization collapse resulting from such a claim.

Are we talking about a dorm or an actual house? How much house do people have a right to?

Isaac, what is your response to the parasite case that I presented earlier on our island civilization? Does he have a right to the community's continued support through housing and food?

Yes, but these don't help us resolve differences over rights, which extend frequently into areas of morality over which there is far less agreement.

Yes, it's not absurd to say that someone has a right to housing or healthcare. On the other hand, if one could gain a right simply by proclaiming it as a want or desire it would result in absurdity like if everyone were just to demand constant back massages.

Now, of course, if absurdity doesn't bother you then, well, more power to you, but I see it as boundary for moral discussion.

You can't just arbitrarily say its not a right because it burdens someone else. Why doe burdening someone else prevent it from being a right?

I noted an important distinction. If you choose not to accept it as meaningful then okay.

Another way you approach it is an appeal to fairness: Imagine we were on a passenger plane and that plane crashed into an island and all the passengers now had to rebuild society. Everyone is working and planning and maybe they've elected a leadership, but I just flat out refuse to contribute. I'm happy to take whatever food or clothing the tribe gathers, but I personally refuse to contribute anything despite being able-bodied and perfectly able.

Now I demand a house and a sufficient income from the tribe.

If everyone were to do this there would be no civilization.

Again, you can dig your heels in and demand that these rights exist but I mean God...

Right. But basic moral intuitions don't help us with issues of rights because people disagree. Basic moral intuitions are not agreed upon.

There actually is widespread agreement on basic moral issues. How many people do you think are okay with wanton murder or rape? A sense of justice is built into us and I think you'd be surprised at the large number of issues that people agree upon.

then what is preventing the homeless person from claiming a right to housing?

It's a fundamentally different type of claim than claiming a right to life, which just involves that no one kills you or maims you intentionally. If I claim a right to housing I'm claiming that someone else must pay for and build a house for me. Also someone must repair and maintain that house now. Now other people are burdened whether through their time being taken or their money being taken.

If you agree that you're wronging that person then.... congratulations, you win, I guess?

I'm appealing to basic moral intuitions.... like that if I demand constant back massages from you that you're not actually obliged to give them. If you just want disregard this then you do you.

So what are they then? All you've given so far is that they are claims on individuals or governments. Nothing in that prevents you from declaring a right to constant back massages.

Yes, anyone can declare a right to constant back massages. That doesn't mean that that right exists.

If you've violated someone's rights you've seriously wronged them, do you agree? Are you seriously wronging someone who desires constant back massages by not giving them that?

The positive right to housing is just the negative right to not die from exposure. The positive right to health care is just the negative right to not be left to die.

Rights are claims on individuals or the government. While it's unfortunate if someone dies of exposure, we can't conclude that their rights were violated. If I wander off into the woods and die after getting lost - sure it's awful, but my rights weren't violated unless you want to be silly and say that "nature committed a crime" or something like that. Even if a homeless man dies on the street are we to say that everyone who passed him by violated his rights?

Rights are not simply wants or desires either. Otherwise I'd have a right to constant back massages.

Perhaps in academic circles too much is importance is given to the social control aspect of these hierarchies, along the lines of Michel Foucault, and the simple pragmatic reasoning just why things like the military are hierarchial with centralized leadership are sidelined.

I haven't read Foucault... but I do have over 5 years active duty military experience in the US (I am in the military.)

The effective function of the US military in peace time - obviously there's the national security part - but aside from that it brings people and families into the middle class (on the enlisted side.) You'll see Dave Ramsey posters at whatever duty station you're at and I can tell you that there'll always be lectures and classes on financial readiness no matter where you are. The US military absolutely has a vested interest in its soldiers being financially stable and this often a very pertinent issue because you have often young people from lower class backgrounds getting decent, stable paychecks for the first time in their lives. There's much more that could be said about this: The GI bill encouraging college attendance and the VA home loan giving someone the option to purchase a home with 0% down to name a couple.

On the other hand, as soldiers get married they do get dependent on this system and leaving would result in a pay cut so that's a definite reason how you get soldiers to stay in for the full 20 years plus the option of a pension and this is especially true once kids enter into the picture.

I'd be interested to read what academics have said about the military and if you've read that material I'd be interested in hearing it.

The example of the military shows that a true leadership school works only for very hierarchial organizations where higher level leaders are chosen by a formal process.

Yep - just expanding on your point here, in the US these types of leadership schools are present at basically all levels including the enlisted. For instance, once you make Sergeant (E-5) you're sent off to a leadership course and ditto when you hit climb up to E-7 when you're now supervising sergeants. Leadership education is pretty big in the US military.

Treating the height difference as if it's causing that difference in income is extremely bizarre. Imagine the social programs that would come of it:

I'm not saying it's the sole trait, but I don't think it's a shocking or absurd hypothesis that height helps men climb dominance hierarchies. The same thing could be said for good-looks. It's one trait amount many that helps.

Though nature only affords our societies with some of the differential, or enables/renders possible social costs which leverage distinctions in bodily properties, rather than playing a primary causal role for any of the social costs of having those bodily properties.

I get what you're saying here and it makes sense, but I do think there's a case to be made for say, humans inherently preferring more symmetrical faces.

Having a certain height or skin colour can only be changed through interventions like eugenics; drown all babies that come out at less than a certain size or whose skin colour is not as desired, or otherwise prevent reproduction of those people, maybe kill all people under 1.2 meters tall on their 16th birthday.

We're at a point where we can use genetic editing to eliminate diseases or conditions prenatally in mice, but we're still a ways off from humans. It seems this is going to become a greater issue as technology advances and we already have companies like CRISPR working directly on this genome editing. I'm just saying it's not like the old days where we'd need to use very painful or brutal means to accomplish something like this.

It's really coming down to what the possibilities of political action are and which ones are most relevant; race, gender/sex and disability are differences between people which engender risks that both matter a lot and can practically be mitigated or stopped through intervention.

Sure, but don't you believe the discussion could be broadened? Studies show the CEOs of fortunate 500 companies tend to be something like 3 inches taller than the average man, and that per every inch of height a man has it's an extra $800/year and that's not even digging into the inherent social respect given to height and romantic prospects. I think we can all agree that good-looking people are subject to preferable treatment and we could certain enact policies to at least aim to target this.

I'm just asking here whether you think the discussion ought to be broadened outside of the usual one on race, class, and gender (and sometimes disability which I think doesn't receive the same type of treatment as the others.)

Ok, and I could argue that fixing ugliness or equalizing height results in better lives for those people and levels the playing field in a number of areas. I feel we're kind of at a dead end here.

the ultimate goal is almost universally some variant of human well-being.

Why would gene editing resulting in height equality or fixing ugliness be antithetical to human well-being?

Recently a poll done by newsweek showed close to 80% of philosophy majors - higher than any other field - supported socialism, so I'd say at least for the "philosophy student" side of things we can draw our conclusions.

Every value needs to be weighed against other values. Equality is a value, and it's a value on both the left and the right but to different extents. Equality often takes the form of empowering or leveling the playing field for disadvantaged populations. Personally, I think it's a little cold and unempathetic to basically claim that you'd just like to preserve the struggles of these disadvantaged populations for the sake of "diversity."

People are against race-mixing for the purpose of preserving diversity. Of course that's not a stance that I attribute to you, but you can't just throw out "diversity" or some other competing value when I mention "equality" and deny that we even value equality.

Well I was responding to ZBT, that's why I linked his name.

I don't mean to make this a left vs. right thing. For some people equality IS a big value, so this point probably isn't aimed at you. I feel like you're viewing this as a person attack.

The issue I'm prodding about - as the discussion has evolved - is equality of opportunity or having a level playing field which I think a lot of people on both sides of the spectrum are cool with. As technology evolves and these issues enter into the realm of possibility, what does everyone think about addressing some of nature's inequalities?

My "evidence" is the way that the ZBT phrased his response: He said there was no magic wand, and in order to reach the goal we'd have to do X, Y, and Z which are appalling. That's not dismissing the goal; that's dismissing the means.

Ok, but we already agree that the goal itself is on the table.

We can go back and forth about the means... it's immaterial. Today we're making progress with genetic editing so hopefully we wouldn't need to resort to something as invasive as surgery.

IF the option were to present itself in a non-invasive manner (which could very well not be too far off) should we do it?

This is only the tip of the iceberg: consider further, is it fair that some men have a distribution of muscles that, say, gives them an advantage when it comes to sprinting?

Sure, but nature's inequalities manifest themselves in actual, everyday life whether it's a job hunt or promotions or social activity, etc. My main reason for this thread was just to point out that today's left seems to push for equality with, say, A, B, and C but they're not interested in X, Y, and Z which end up favoring/advocating for certain groups and basically ignoring others.

The reason we're all appalled at the idea of equality of height or equality of intelligence is that we have no intuitive notion that such a project might further human welfare

Are you really appalled by the idea of equality of height? Imagine if you could wave a magic wand and from here on out all the men would be 5'10 and all the women 5'4. I understand that the actual real life means to achieving this could be objectionable, but the goal itself is hardly something that makes someone recoil.

It would level the playing field if all men were the same height. That's where equality of opportunity comes in.