送交者: mangolasi 于 2005-4-02, 12:24:32:
1. I don't think there is any sacredness in laws. There are just and unjust laws. Laws aren't principles.
2. Your emphasis on "fairness of game" suggests that you are a practical person. However, I like to put effort to distinguish the principle matter and practical matter. And "fairness of game" is practical matters, decided after having considered all possible related issues. Hence it isn't fixed or even anywhere near being fixed. What I have argued is that the (one's own) organ trading is not wrong in principle, because it's voluntary.
However, this doesn't mean the justification of libertarianism. The trade doesn't take place in vacuum, rather, it takes place in an enviornment. And usually the base mechanism is alright, but the add-on packages can do a lot of harms. In the wild, we can think of a lot of misinformation (especially involving learning disability) and coercions (not economic reason, please flash the picture of force one's handprint on the contract--literally) in organ trading, Shockley's offer or student-teacher relationship. And the relative power of all parties involved does make huge difference, concerns over which is not catered by the base mechanism. Thus that is the law's job to cater it (given that law is just), to avoid manipulation and exploitation. But evaluating whether the majority is imformed and voluntary, and what's the harm if some are not under the current situation, is beyong the limit of some forum ethical comtemplation. They are the jobs of technical professionals.
But most law (I want to say all) are simply expedience. Powers will change. When situation change, laws should be changed. From secular humanistic point of view, the only principle is "no harm to others", which is more and more widely accepted. Organ trading, Shockley's offer and student-teacher realtionship all pass this test--in their bare-bone forms. Denial of this things by laws (even the just ones) doesn't mean any morality judgement, for most of the time, it jsut mean allowing would do more harm than goods at the moments.
So what makes Shockley's offer laothsome to me is not the offer per se. Rather, it's his premise: blacks and low-IQ people should not reproduce. He offered it since the law doesn't prohibit the reproduction of these people. He used his own money, rather than change the law to sterlize those people. So I don't agree with his program, but the disagreement starts at his premise and stops at his premise. The remaining part is fine. Actually, if his offer did not involved any coercion and misinformation, given that fact that this harmless (in principle) offer is based on his sincere belief, "benevolent" is at the tip of my tongue.
Thus for Ziyu, I feel sympathic (not entirely agree) with his/her premise, and since the mechanism is fine to me, so I intend to agree with the argument.
3. I think it's inevitable to define more points besides death, brain death and life in the comtinuum with entire death at one end and entirely fullfilled life at the other one, given the advances of medical technology. There should be law addressing the power and limit of the guardians at those points, w/ or w/o living wills.
So in the T.S. case, I am sad that the lawsuit doesn't leave such a legacy, even though so much social resource is wasted on this lawsuit. The whole argument was on evidence part: her will and her health situation. No contribution on legal system which would be desirable in the near future.
4. A small though on low paid illegal immigrants. In a simple and static thoery considering only capitalists and workers, no lower bound limit on wage is desirable--provided post-production tax and redistribution is at work. Thus nothing wrong with accepting lower wage voluntarily in principle. But once you consider something like bargining power in a dynamic way, things would be different. Enforcing limit on wage or not depends on your evaluation: which case is more plausible in the future? the whole society is becoming more prosperous and everyone better off or you are just creating some evil monopolist capitalist empire? I don't know. Data and evidence will tell us, and it's again very technical jobs and needs professionals. But no matter what's better, that only means "better" in a certain circumstance. Trade-off is neccessary. Change is neccessary, too.
If only people's desire to relocate is in concern, it's evil in principle not to let people go and work anywhere they want. Sometimes the desire to relocate is so strong, thus they would like to go even illegally. Their opportunity in the home country is so pathetic, what's wrong with them to take lower wage in the host country which is far higher than that in home country? They don't harm anyone, right? (don't tell me you think competition is "harm". Jobs are not entitlements). I don't doubt they are voluntarily take the job w/ lower wage. What's deplorable is exactly that they, usually informed and w/o being forced, do it voluntarily, even gratefully. This implies the terrible situation in their home country. No farther implication. Sad.
In practice, there are some concern about national safety and politics--e.g. the anti-immigration party has more sensible policy at other more important issue, but one has to buy packaged policies, not shopping them one by one. And once you buy (hmmmmm, involuntarily) the immigration control policy, there bounds to be illegal immigrants. Sad reality is that many of them are indeed exploited (especially by the snake men). And no action on employers employing them is indirectly encouraging them, and might provide more opportunitis to snake men than illegal immigrants themselves. Hey, might not be. Low wage illegal immigrants issue is far more ambiguous than the other three.