[graphitezepp]

Something happened over the years that caused, at least in my experience living in America, people to incredibly deeply associate legality with morality. I suspect this is universal to some degree in societies around the world and in history. But how prevalent it is in my lived experience feels deeply Orwellian. As long as Big Brother approves your in the right, right?

[yardie]

I’d say the 24 hour news channel. Crime has been dropping since it peaked in the mid 90s. You wouldn’t think so if your constantly bombarded with crime reports all around the country and world at all hours of the day.

This manifests itself in viewers electing politicians who are more tough on crime than the last election.

[CompelTechnic]

If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose?

Or to put it another way, assuming that I share a common moral sense with my fellow citizens, I would much prefer a legal system that is strongly associated with morality than one that is not.

If your objection is that the law feels to retributive, then that is a separate issue.

[zajd]

> If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose?

To maintain existing power structures

[V-2]

The more the law diverges from the morality (as commonly understood in a given society), the more oppressive power structures you need in order to maintain it.

[Nadya]

>I would much prefer a legal system that is strongly associated with morality than one that is not.

The issue with morality based laws is that morals are subjective. I would prefer a legal system with absolutely no morality - instead being based off of reason and logical conclusions. Being explained well enough in layman terms that people can see why the law is the way it is. "Pay your taxes for schools and roads. Don't kill you neighbor because you wouldn't want to be killed. Don't steal because you wouldn't want to be stolen from."

Morality based laws is how you end up with "It's criminal to be a homosexual. Skirts must pass the knee. Cannabis and alcohol are only for bad people. You must be [religion] to be moral, because only immoral people aren't part of [religion]".

[CompelTechnic]

The reason cannabis is being legalized in several states is people's changing moral intuitions leading to public action to change the law. The law has not stopped being an approximation of morality in that regard.

Reason and logical conclusions are not contradictory to a citizenry's moral intuitions, but are orthogonal to them.

[Nadya]

>The reason cannabis is being legalized in several states is people's changing moral intuitions leading to public action to change the law.

Existing laws in the US are largely based on protestant morals. That's kind of the point I was going for: morality based laws can change on a whim once the publicly held views of what is moral changes and that should be seen as a bad thing and it is unfortunate our current laws are so heavily rooted in morality instead of reason. Also, the two can overlap! I'm not saying they never can, I'm saying they sometimes don't. And the times in history where they don't overlap is where you'll see many of the largest crimes against humanity committed simply because it was "legal (and by extension: moral)" to do so.

[notheguyouthink]

> If the law is not at least an approximation of morality, then what is its purpose?

Perhaps it's meaningful the other way around, too. So many people I see don't want more rigid tax laws, because morals are enough. I argue that morals guiding tax laws only cause to harm those good enough to have morals following the tax laws.

It would seem morals should perhaps guide the desired end result of the law, like no killing your neighbor, but the laws to get to that end state might be counter intuitive. Something Americans suffer greatly from grasping.

[cmiles74]

I think the idea that "law and order" is an approximation of morality is giving to much credit to the law, it enforcement, and all of things that have grown up around it. For sure, some laws clearly have some basis in someone's idea of what moral behavior might be, for instance the prohibition of alcohol. But there's also a lot in there that's really just keeping society's machinery churning in a practical sense (parking tickets, speeding, small claims court), or in the case of finance there's bits in there to preserve clearly immoral behavior (tax "loopholes", etc.)

[J-dawg]

I'm aware of the same thing in the UK. I don't know whether something has happened over the years or if it's always been that way.

So many people seem content in their assumption that the state is essentially benevolent and wise and on their side.

Even with the recent spate of ridiculous arrests and prosecutions we've had over freedom-of-speech issues (which some of us find terrifying), you get this attitude of "well, it seems a bit harsh, but he did break the law!"

I like to remind people that you don't need to look very far back for examples of when the state got it very, very wrong (by modern standards of morality). The illegality of homosexuality, and the cruel punishment inflicted on people like Alan Turing, is the most obvious example of this.

[kaybe]

As a German I am very very aware of the distinction, and our school system puts emphasis on this too. Just following the rules is no excuse.

[mmirate]

Consider some action to be taken.

The action is under consideration because it causes some benefit, worth $A.

The action may cause some public-relations fallout, which in turn will cause some amount of lost business (or analogous malus). The total losses caused by public-relations effects are a continuous random variable; and a complicated one, because the causality chain between action and the final losses involves multiple random events.

But, it has some expected value, $B > $0. (Disregard outliers, so as to better approximate the median outcome rather than the mean outcome.)

Finally, the action will inevitably cost some resources to implement, worth a total of $C.

(Again, all three quantities $A, $B and $C are nonnegative.)

We can then evaluate whether the action may be taken. That question is equivalent to the following:

"Is it legal? And if so, then does it hold that $A > $B + $C?"

(In the larger context, then, if multiple actions may be taken, then choosing which single one should be taken is a matter of maximizing that same inequality rather than truth-testing it.)

* * * * *

Why should we use any decision-making process other than the above?

Equivalently: why should we take into account any further "morality", beyond merely legality plus long-term expected-value for oneself?

[facetube]

"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

That's why.

[computator]

> Should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by ...

Did you pick that example because of the Ford Pinto case? In case you didn't know about it, that's exactly the cost/benefit analysis that Ford did when they discovered that the gas tank on the Pinto would rupture if the car was hit from behind at 31 mph or greater. Here's the infamous internal memo:

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/tortsprof/files/FordMemo.pd...

Look at Table 3 on page 6. Paying $200,000 per death would cost $49.5 million. Strengthening the tank at $11 per car would cost $137 million. Clearly it was cheaper to pay settlements on the deaths.

[mmirate]

> Clearly it was cheaper to pay settlements on the deaths.

That merely shows that tort settlements at that time didn't have an accurate price on human life. $200,000 is about $1.13 million in today's money, which is only about 7 years of senior-dev salary. An early death usually costs more than 7 years of healthy life.

If we assume that the median car-fire death actually had 20 years of healthy life ahead of them, instead of 7, then we can conclude that typical settlements should have cost about $500,000 (in the same 1973 money) instead of $200,000.

This would have raised the total tort cost estimate to $123 million, at which point the two figures are close enough that the entire discussion would have ceased to be worth the amount of C-level labor that must have gone into it.

(The above also assumes that one's own life is worth as much as one can earn prior to death-by-natural-causes. I have yet to find evidence to disprove this hypothesis with respect to my own life ... but some people feel that life is even more valuable. If those people were to perform the same process as I did above, then their conclusion would be even more powerful than mine.)

When you underprice something you have, don't be surprised to find yourself in a drastic shortage of it.

[daviross]

I believe that specific wording is also an exact line out of _Fight Club_

[facetube]

Yep, that's the one.

[dsfyu404ed]

That doesn't hold as much water when victim is the same party that would be paying for the recall. With social issues like crime society is both the victim and paying for the settlements/recall. Resources are not infinite (eventually you run out of other people's money). I want society to spend the resources I have to give it as effectively as possible. If that means paying settlements then I'm all for paying settlements.

[logfromblammo]

This quote always brings to my mind the Ford Windstar.

Now, they did do a recall for a problem with the cruise control cutoff switch possibly leaking brake fluid. But not included in that recall was any damage that leaked brake fluid might have done to the anti-lock brake control module, or any of the other electronic or electrical components located beneath the potential leak site.

Such parts can be corroded by leaked brake fluid, causing electrical shorts and burnt-out components. And the brake fluid is itself quite flammable. Your Ford Windstar can burst into flames while you are at speed on a highway. Or it could simply light itself on fire sitting unattended in your driveway and turn itself into a total loss. Most of the time, it just drains its own battery or kills all the instrument gauges in the dashboard.

No recall for this problem. And yet, the vehicle has already had several previous recalls, including one for the rear axle potentially breaking in half. This leads me to believe that there is another term, D, for the estimated dollar amount for a loss to brand value due to doing another recall.

But then again, "Found on Road, Dead" didn't come from nowhere, so I'm not sure how much value is left there.

[mmirate]

Indeed, the need for that extra term is part of the sloppiness that I identified in another comment here.

[mmirate]

I don't see how that answers my question.

That logic is exactly the rational thing to do, provided that settlements are the only consequence of that flaw.

If, on the other hand, this being the real world, there is some probability that customers will discover this flaw (e.g. reading a news article about such a crash-and-burn) and thereby demand fewer cars, causing fewer or cheaper sales ... then that also affects the calculation.

So, aside from this quote representing some degree of sloppiness, which can't be solved with "morality" ... I don't see the problem here.

[facetube]

Yes, ignoring all moral and ethical externalities – things that are important to human beings – does indeed make economics easier to fake on the internet. Letting people die in foreseeable fiery crashes, however, is not how an organized civil society deals with product defects that put lives at risk. It is immoral to do so: a concept which actually does exist, no matter how hard you sarcastiquote it.

Your proposed framework would make for a silly Ayn Rand book or two, but little more.

[mmirate]

> things that are important to human beings

If they were important, then there would be economic value to them.

(And to some extent this is in fact the case: even once the de Havilland Comet's metal-fatigue issues were compensated-for and recalls completed, nobody wanted to fly on it, so it became a commercial flop, and now the air-transport leader is Boeing not de Havilland.)

[sincerely]

>If they were important, then there would be economic value to them.

What justifies this statement? It seems nearly mind-bogglingly false to me so I would be interested to hear support for it.

[facetube]

So if there's no economic value attached to something, you consider it unimportant by definition? Wow.

[jjaredsimpson]

Isn't this just true by definition? Don't break the law while doing the best thing for yourself.

It avoids the hard question grandparent asked. Legality only partitions behaviors into legal and illegal. Morality is more like a partial order which lets you compare behaviors.

Morality then is clearly more general and must inform legality not the other way around. Which is to say, just because you aren't breaking the law doesn't mean you are a good person. And further, how should we construct legal systems which are moral?

[mmirate]

> Isn't this just true by definition? Don't break the law while doing the best thing for yourself.

Yes, it is. The comment I was responding to, appears to assert that there is something more to it; some kind of "morality". I question the purpose of following it, when it can only possibly cause one to make decisions with lesser expected-value (i.e. self-sabotage).

[noxToken]

I don't think this is the last few years. I am but one data point, but morality and law have always been closely linked in the United States. I would further claim that for many Christians, morality and law are also closely linked with religion. Southern political ads[0] will surely back this up.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwiqcZVujRc

[V-2]

Quite the opposite. Anchoring the law in morality works like a safeguard against the dystopian scenarios. Laws can be changed overnight - but permanently altering societal views on morality takes considerably longer.

This process is still achievable (called 'perekovka' by the Soviets), but it can take whole generations, and a great deal of power.

Besides, when the law isn't anchored in commonly shared sense of morality, you'll basically have no other option but a politically oppressive system (to balance this factor out).

[drewmol]

Through our (USofA) short history, at least half of the federal congress persons & presidents who've served have came from a prior held legal profession, most of those credentialed attorneys. I suspect this has been greatly impactful on the deep assosiation you describe.

[petra]

I remember reading a research telling that the internet/smartphones caused a significant decrease in empathy.

Without empathy, and very little attention to the matter , could you expect any different result ?

[Spooky23]

The US has always been a land of paradox. We have a narrative/ethos of personal freedom, but the details are a little different.

[pdfernhout]

Growing up in the USA I was taught in public school in the 1960s and 1970s that we lived in a better version of Ancient Athens. It took years to realize (e.g. reading Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, and Smedley Butler) that in several ways we instead live in a version of Ancient Sparta instead. Perhaps the Athenian ideal was indeed more true when those teachers themselves grew up (in the 1920s and 1930s).

But in any case, as Manuel De Landa says, all real systems are combinations of both meshwork (associative freedom) and hierarchy (imposed structure) -- that often transform into each other. http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm