Then you are a bad person, for wanting other people beaten up when it doesn’t benefit you.
Then you are a bad person, for wanting other people beaten up when it doesn’t benefit you.
What? Firstly, I said “for reasons that weren’t obvious at the time”, not for no reason. Things can benefit me in non-obvious ways.
Even without that, it is sometimes morally laudable to want people beaten up when it doesn’t benefit me. For example, suppose I lived in New Zealand, 1940. I’d like members of the Gestapo to be so badly beaten up they couldn’t do their jobs. This is at least prima facie a good desire to have, but I (living a very long way away, being Aryan so unlikely to be attacked even if one day National Socialism rules the entire world, etc.) wouldn’t benefit from it at all.
It would not be reasonable for you to say that you want the dictator to be able to beat people up for no reason.
If they voluntarily (without duress, etc., etc.) came into the country, understanding that this was the way it worked, and the dictator was generally enlightened, and his actions were more conducive to peace and liberty and prosperity than the relevant alternatives, and so on, I don’t think it’s obviously unreasonable for me to want him to be able to beat people up for reasons not previously disclosed.
What? Firstly, I said “for reasons that weren’t obvious at the time”, not for no reason. Things can benefit me in non-obvious ways.
Even without that, it is sometimes morally laudable to want people beaten up when it doesn’t benefit me. For example, suppose I lived in New Zealand, 1940. I’d like members of the Gestapo to be so badly beaten up they couldn’t do their jobs. This is at least prima facie a good desire to have, but I (living a very long way away, being Aryan so unlikely to be attacked even if one day National Socialism rules the entire world, etc.) wouldn’t benefit from it at all.
If they voluntarily (without duress, etc., etc.) came into the country, understanding that this was the way it worked, and the dictator was generally enlightened, and his actions were more conducive to peace and liberty and prosperity than the relevant alternatives, and so on, I don’t think it’s obviously unreasonable for me to want him to be able to beat people up for reasons not previously disclosed.