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by cmroanirgo 1422 days ago
Those "pushing the boundaries" always end up using a similar logic. However, there's always going to be a large segment of society whose rules are based around non financially oriented methodologies, such as: "morals", or directly from spiritual texts which disallow certain practices, or historical "customs". Such things are not "illegal" per se, but it's largely held as being reprehensible by a large number of people nevertheless & causes a large amount of friction within society.

Then there's the issue of marketing/propaganda (which the parent mentions as "hammered") whose sole purpose it's to change people's minds in an emotional way. I wish people would learn about Edward Bernays, nephew of Freud, who instituted this. In and of itself, propaganda has never been illegal, but no one likes to admit to being emotionally manipulated. (But when you begin to pay attention to your emotions, you can spot this stuff from a mile away).
3 comments
masswerk 1422 days ago
I think, what you are addressing is social convention and social norms, which are enforced by social sanctions only. However, while these are soft norms, laws are hard norms and enforced by the legal system, which is an important difference. Therefor (however we may feel about this) something may be intuitively and morally wrong, but still perfectly legal. Still, this may subject to social action, which may be what you are aiming at. This is, what civil society is about.
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judge2020 1422 days ago
Not sure what the stance being argued is. Should we require companies run morality polls and submit a pre-rollout court to determine the legality of new products that push the limits of human innovation?

Also, it's important to note that humans are actually quite bad at this sort of judgement. I'm sure if you showed everyone in Germany in 1980 a computer, and how it can instantly store and retrieve files and documents, and asked them 'is this moral?' they would be against it on the grounds that it would put hundreds of office workers out of a job.

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bigDinosaur 1422 days ago
Great. Now what's your policy proposal?
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