In cases where it breaks the law, because it breaks the law. In other words, I’m taking the violation of the law to be an important part of the action description.
So if stealing were legal, it wouldn’t be objectionable? If it still would be, then I contend there is still a significant difference between stealing and filesharing.
In legal positivism, there is a sharp conceptual divide between what the law is and what the law should be. The law is simply the price society has set for certain acts (Serial killer—death penalty, jaywalking - $100, etc). Why did the law set those particular prices? One can’t figure it out by only looking at the enacted law.
I hope that law is enacted by reference to our moral beliefs. But one cannot consistently assert that law is the table of prices and that one can define our moral beliefs based on what is enacted into law.
One can avoid the whole issue by asserting that property is more than simply the legal institution. That’s called natural law.
But one cannot consistently assert that law is the table of prices and that one can define our moral beliefs based on what is enacted into law.
But that’s not what I’ve claimed. I’ve said that the current law is good evidence for what law should be, just as current medical practice is good evidence for what a doctor should do in a given case. This is nothing other than the claim that in our attempt to do something well, we should look in part to our previous attempts. I can’t understand how this would be controversial unless you were taking me to say “current law determines the optimal legal system”, but this is far, far stronger than anything I’ve said, especially under a Bayesian understanding of ‘evidence’.
One can avoid the whole issue by asserting that property is more than simply the legal institution. That’s called natural law.
One can’t, and shouldn’t, avoid the issue at all, certainly not by simply asserting anything. We should address the issue and perhaps argue that property is more than simply a legal institution. It’s a view I’m quite open to, if you wish to make the case for it.
I’ve said that the current law is good evidence for what law should be, just as current medical practice is good evidence for what a doctor should do in a given case.
It does not seem to me that the process through which laws are made in my country is an optimizing process for finding “what law should be”. It appears to me more like an optimizing process for finding “what laws would benefit politicians, their families, and their friends.” The feedback loop through which it’s supposed to be the case that politicians get benefited by passing good laws is currently not working very well, at least in part thanks to ideology and anti-epistemologies.
Copyright extension is actually a really great example of this. It strikes me as extremely unlikely that the optimal copyright term would be monotonically increasing, now to effectively two human lifetimes. This doesn’t look like the result of a “quality of law” optimization; it looks like the result of a “money extraction for my buddies” optimization.
It appears that I’m misunderstanding this comment you made. When asked what the difference was between filesharing and lending a book, you said that one was legal and one wasn’t. That’s true, but why should it be true?
If you think the law is evidence of the optimal social order, then you should be able to articulate why this is the optimal social ordering. I could try to articulate the basis using historical practice and different technological capacity. But argument screens off authority, so there’s no value to invoking law in making that explanation.
t appears that I’m misunderstanding this comment you made. When asked what the difference was between filesharing and lending a book, you said that one was legal and one wasn’t. That’s true, but why should it be true?
My claim to Anubhav has been that violating a law for one’s profit is immoral, and this is regardless of the quality of the law violated. So the question ‘why should this law be a law at all’ doesn’t directly bear on the issue. That said, I’ve also agreed that violating a law, where the law is unjust and where the violation makes the removal of the law more likely, may even be a good thing. So none of this hangs on any claim about how laws ought to be made.
If you think the law is evidence of the optimal social order, then you should be able to articulate why this is the optimal social ordering.
I take law to be straightforward evidence for the optimal social order: in any case where we are living in a society stable enough to consider the adjustment of the laws, the optimal and short-term practically achievable social order will look something very much like the current social order. I have some serious objections to the article you link to, but that seems like a digression.
Hmm, I suppose it seems to me that if the law serves to enforce desired social arrangements, then the law absolutely is evidence of the optimal social arrangement, so long as we have reason to expect that the citizens of a polity in general desire an optimal social arrangement. Which seems defensible to me. And it need not be defensible in this particular instance (perhaps CR laws serve the interests only of a minority against the public good) for my case to go through. Namely, that the violation of a law belongs in the description of an action under ethical evaluation.
And it need not be defensible in this particular instance (perhaps CR laws serve the interests only of a minority against the public good) for my case to go through. Namely, that the violation of a law belongs in the description of an action under ethical evaluation.
This doesn’t follow from my premise. When the law provided that hiding fugitive slaves was illegal, that did not make hiding fugitive slaves immoral.
The claim that there is an independent “respect for the law” variable necessary for predicting human behavior is a contested thesis. For example, empirical evidence seems to support the assertion that crackdowns on minor vandalism reduce the frequency of more significant crime like car theft. But it’s less clear whether that extends to reducing major crime (like rape and murder).
When the law provided that hiding fugitive slaves was illegal, that did not make hiding fugitive slaves immoral.
Right, but as I said, counterexamples aren’t a big deal here: for my argument to go though I need to be able to claim that the law is a good evidence concerning perscriptions to the public good, etc. It need not be the case that any given law be such. The possibility that they are all directed against the public good is too absurd to consider.
For public choice reasons, there’s no basis for believing that a law is directed at the public good simply because it has been enacted and carries legal force. Especially when narrow interests have reason to have much stronger opinions than the public as a whole.
The possibility that they are all directed against the public good is too absurd to consider.
That’s not a big deal here; for your argument to fail to go through, we need to be able to claim that the law isn’t good evidence concerning prescriptions for the public good, because a significant proportion of it was written by short-sighted men with no idea of the long-term consequences of their decisions, and an even more significant proportion of it was written to favour special interests.
because a significant proportion of it was written by short-sighted men with no idea of the long-term consequences of their decisions, and an even more significant proportion of it was written to favour special interests.
This is an empirical claim for which I would want some empirical evidence. I’m very wary of anything which looks like political cynicism.
This is an empirical claim for which I would want some empirical evidence.
Same for your assertion that most laws are written for the public good. Yours seems to be the more indefensible prior, since I’m sure you’ll agree that every single ancient/medieval government turned out laws that overwhelmingly favoured entrenched elites over common people. Given that, if modern governments have truly stopped doing that, that would be something extraordinary which merits an explanation.
Also, there’s the fact that short-sighted men are more numerous than far-sighted ones (or would you dispute that as well?), and that the public interest is a small target in the wide space of possible laws, (or do you dispute this, claiming that a large proportion of all possible laws are in the public interest?) you’d expect more bad laws (defined as laws which hinder the public interest, whether intentionally or as a side effect) to get passed than good ones. Then there’s the fact that representatives of special interests can contact those in power more easily than their constituents can. (Dispute that if you will, I have no interest in defending it. It’s easy enough to test: Just try contacting Joe Biden and see how that goes.)
If you don’t dispute any of this, you probably have some over-riding factors in mind that would make it less surprising that despite all this, a large fraction of laws somehow still turn out to be in the public interest.
Same for your assertion that most laws are written for the public good.
True, though I think Tim’s formulation alone lends it some credence: the law is (on his premises) an expression of the publicly desired social arrangements, and the public can be taken to desire the optimal social arrangements, then the law is evidence (not conclusive evidence, but evidence) for what the optimal social arrangements are.
This obviously doesn’t follow for all laws, but it should follow generally. Some laws may serve private interests or incompetently written, but on the whole that can’t be true. No such polity would last a year.
I’m sure you’ll agree that every single ancient/medieval government turned out laws that overwhelmingly favoured entrenched elites over common people.
I’m familiar with only a few ancient legal systems. (ETA: and there’s a strong survivorship bias for the best ones, since the really bad ones tended not to have written law codes). They’re a mixed bag. But I think favoring entrenched elites over common people probably does serve the common good pretty effectively (though so does doing the opposite, and both can be bad too). Legal systems which clearly worked against the public good on the whole, like the various oligarchies set up in Athens following the Peloponnesian war, didn’t last long. I think the only time you really get laws that work on the whole against the public good are in cases where those laws are imposed by a conquerer.
Almost all legal systems on the whole are good on the whole. Some (like ours, and I say this almost regardless of where you live) are vastly better than others. Places that are lawless are really, really horrible. I haven’t spent any time in these places (South Africa is the closest I’ve come) but I’ve spent a lot of time reading about them, especially ancient ones. We’re very lucky to have our bad legal systems.
claiming that a large proportion of all possible laws are in the public interest?
Right, exactly. There are good questions to be raised about any given law, but legal systems on the whole are good for people. Very, very rarely do they do more harm than good. That’s one of the reasons why I think breaking the law is morally significant in every case, though not in every case morally wrong.
Legal systems which clearly worked against the public good on the whole, like the various oligarchies set up in Athens following the Peloponnesian war, didn’t last long.
Of course, if you restrict your search entirely to metal-wielding literate societies seen through the eyes of their own historians (whose expectations of normalcy were completely different from ours) you might get a skewed image of things.
But I think favoring entrenched elites over common people probably does serve the common good pretty effectively (though so does doing the opposite).
We seem to be operating on different definitions of ‘common good’. My definition is along the lines of ‘something that raises the average (standard of living/utilon count/something like that) of a population’. There’s no way that favouring a few people at the expense of a population greater than theirs by two orders of magnitude would do that. (Given the law of diminishing returns, at least.)
The next paragraph is a non-sequitur. I never argued for lawlessness. If I didn’t like my phone, I wouldn’t throw it away and and resolve never to use a phone again. I’d look for a better phone.
Right, exactly. There are good questions to be raised about any given law, but legal systems on the whole are good for people.
Another non-sequitur. I asked about every possible law, not every law that is passed.
Of course, if you restrict your search entirely to metal-wielding literate societies seen through the eyes of their own historians (whose expectations of normalcy were completely different from ours) you might get a skewed image of things.
You brought up ancient societies, and it’s impossible that you have alternative sources. Are you now saying that this isn’t a good place to look for evidence?
My definition is along the lines of ‘something that raises the average (standard of living/utilon count/something like that) of a population’.
That’s far more minimal than my understanding of the term, but that works for me. And remember that I’m just trying to argue that the law on the whole serves the public good on the whole. Not that every given law serves the public good.
In cases where it breaks the law, because it breaks the law. In other words, I’m taking the violation of the law to be an important part of the action description.
So if stealing were legal, it wouldn’t be objectionable? If it still would be, then I contend there is still a significant difference between stealing and filesharing.
This is a question of whether or not property is a legal institution or something more. I’m inclined to think the former. What do you say?
In legal positivism, there is a sharp conceptual divide between what the law is and what the law should be. The law is simply the price society has set for certain acts (Serial killer—death penalty, jaywalking - $100, etc). Why did the law set those particular prices? One can’t figure it out by only looking at the enacted law.
I hope that law is enacted by reference to our moral beliefs. But one cannot consistently assert that law is the table of prices and that one can define our moral beliefs based on what is enacted into law.
One can avoid the whole issue by asserting that property is more than simply the legal institution. That’s called natural law.
But that’s not what I’ve claimed. I’ve said that the current law is good evidence for what law should be, just as current medical practice is good evidence for what a doctor should do in a given case. This is nothing other than the claim that in our attempt to do something well, we should look in part to our previous attempts. I can’t understand how this would be controversial unless you were taking me to say “current law determines the optimal legal system”, but this is far, far stronger than anything I’ve said, especially under a Bayesian understanding of ‘evidence’.
One can’t, and shouldn’t, avoid the issue at all, certainly not by simply asserting anything. We should address the issue and perhaps argue that property is more than simply a legal institution. It’s a view I’m quite open to, if you wish to make the case for it.
It does not seem to me that the process through which laws are made in my country is an optimizing process for finding “what law should be”. It appears to me more like an optimizing process for finding “what laws would benefit politicians, their families, and their friends.” The feedback loop through which it’s supposed to be the case that politicians get benefited by passing good laws is currently not working very well, at least in part thanks to ideology and anti-epistemologies.
Copyright extension is actually a really great example of this. It strikes me as extremely unlikely that the optimal copyright term would be monotonically increasing, now to effectively two human lifetimes. This doesn’t look like the result of a “quality of law” optimization; it looks like the result of a “money extraction for my buddies” optimization.
It appears that I’m misunderstanding this comment you made. When asked what the difference was between filesharing and lending a book, you said that one was legal and one wasn’t. That’s true, but why should it be true?
If you think the law is evidence of the optimal social order, then you should be able to articulate why this is the optimal social ordering. I could try to articulate the basis using historical practice and different technological capacity. But argument screens off authority, so there’s no value to invoking law in making that explanation.
(As for natural law—no thanks).
My claim to Anubhav has been that violating a law for one’s profit is immoral, and this is regardless of the quality of the law violated. So the question ‘why should this law be a law at all’ doesn’t directly bear on the issue. That said, I’ve also agreed that violating a law, where the law is unjust and where the violation makes the removal of the law more likely, may even be a good thing. So none of this hangs on any claim about how laws ought to be made.
I take law to be straightforward evidence for the optimal social order: in any case where we are living in a society stable enough to consider the adjustment of the laws, the optimal and short-term practically achievable social order will look something very much like the current social order. I have some serious objections to the article you link to, but that seems like a digression.
Why? If one thinks that the law serves to enforce desired social arrangements, then the law is not evidence of the optimal social arrangement.
Hmm, I suppose it seems to me that if the law serves to enforce desired social arrangements, then the law absolutely is evidence of the optimal social arrangement, so long as we have reason to expect that the citizens of a polity in general desire an optimal social arrangement. Which seems defensible to me. And it need not be defensible in this particular instance (perhaps CR laws serve the interests only of a minority against the public good) for my case to go through. Namely, that the violation of a law belongs in the description of an action under ethical evaluation.
This doesn’t follow from my premise. When the law provided that hiding fugitive slaves was illegal, that did not make hiding fugitive slaves immoral.
The claim that there is an independent “respect for the law” variable necessary for predicting human behavior is a contested thesis. For example, empirical evidence seems to support the assertion that crackdowns on minor vandalism reduce the frequency of more significant crime like car theft. But it’s less clear whether that extends to reducing major crime (like rape and murder).
Right, but as I said, counterexamples aren’t a big deal here: for my argument to go though I need to be able to claim that the law is a good evidence concerning perscriptions to the public good, etc. It need not be the case that any given law be such. The possibility that they are all directed against the public good is too absurd to consider.
For public choice reasons, there’s no basis for believing that a law is directed at the public good simply because it has been enacted and carries legal force. Especially when narrow interests have reason to have much stronger opinions than the public as a whole.
For instance.
That’s not a big deal here; for your argument to fail to go through, we need to be able to claim that the law isn’t good evidence concerning prescriptions for the public good, because a significant proportion of it was written by short-sighted men with no idea of the long-term consequences of their decisions, and an even more significant proportion of it was written to favour special interests.
This is an empirical claim for which I would want some empirical evidence. I’m very wary of anything which looks like political cynicism.
Same for your assertion that most laws are written for the public good. Yours seems to be the more indefensible prior, since I’m sure you’ll agree that every single ancient/medieval government turned out laws that overwhelmingly favoured entrenched elites over common people. Given that, if modern governments have truly stopped doing that, that would be something extraordinary which merits an explanation.
Also, there’s the fact that short-sighted men are more numerous than far-sighted ones (or would you dispute that as well?), and that the public interest is a small target in the wide space of possible laws, (or do you dispute this, claiming that a large proportion of all possible laws are in the public interest?) you’d expect more bad laws (defined as laws which hinder the public interest, whether intentionally or as a side effect) to get passed than good ones. Then there’s the fact that representatives of special interests can contact those in power more easily than their constituents can. (Dispute that if you will, I have no interest in defending it. It’s easy enough to test: Just try contacting Joe Biden and see how that goes.)
If you don’t dispute any of this, you probably have some over-riding factors in mind that would make it less surprising that despite all this, a large fraction of laws somehow still turn out to be in the public interest.
True, though I think Tim’s formulation alone lends it some credence: the law is (on his premises) an expression of the publicly desired social arrangements, and the public can be taken to desire the optimal social arrangements, then the law is evidence (not conclusive evidence, but evidence) for what the optimal social arrangements are.
This obviously doesn’t follow for all laws, but it should follow generally. Some laws may serve private interests or incompetently written, but on the whole that can’t be true. No such polity would last a year.
I’m familiar with only a few ancient legal systems. (ETA: and there’s a strong survivorship bias for the best ones, since the really bad ones tended not to have written law codes). They’re a mixed bag. But I think favoring entrenched elites over common people probably does serve the common good pretty effectively (though so does doing the opposite, and both can be bad too). Legal systems which clearly worked against the public good on the whole, like the various oligarchies set up in Athens following the Peloponnesian war, didn’t last long. I think the only time you really get laws that work on the whole against the public good are in cases where those laws are imposed by a conquerer.
Almost all legal systems on the whole are good on the whole. Some (like ours, and I say this almost regardless of where you live) are vastly better than others. Places that are lawless are really, really horrible. I haven’t spent any time in these places (South Africa is the closest I’ve come) but I’ve spent a lot of time reading about them, especially ancient ones. We’re very lucky to have our bad legal systems.
Right, exactly. There are good questions to be raised about any given law, but legal systems on the whole are good for people. Very, very rarely do they do more harm than good. That’s one of the reasons why I think breaking the law is morally significant in every case, though not in every case morally wrong.
Of course, if you restrict your search entirely to metal-wielding literate societies seen through the eyes of their own historians (whose expectations of normalcy were completely different from ours) you might get a skewed image of things.
We seem to be operating on different definitions of ‘common good’. My definition is along the lines of ‘something that raises the average (standard of living/utilon count/something like that) of a population’. There’s no way that favouring a few people at the expense of a population greater than theirs by two orders of magnitude would do that. (Given the law of diminishing returns, at least.)
The next paragraph is a non-sequitur. I never argued for lawlessness. If I didn’t like my phone, I wouldn’t throw it away and and resolve never to use a phone again. I’d look for a better phone.
Another non-sequitur. I asked about every possible law, not every law that is passed.
You brought up ancient societies, and it’s impossible that you have alternative sources. Are you now saying that this isn’t a good place to look for evidence?
That’s far more minimal than my understanding of the term, but that works for me. And remember that I’m just trying to argue that the law on the whole serves the public good on the whole. Not that every given law serves the public good.