Re: Character advancement in games (was Re: Alien RPG cancelled, Obsidian in trouble)

On Sun, 15 Mar 2009 00:48:08 -0500, khaight@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kyle
Haight) blabbed:

In article <qcbmr4de2pjgbcjlr4kan8ksarpjo8u70p@xxxxxxx>,
Leo <Anonymous@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

These are all instances where one is not allowed to keep the
wealth he created. Point was, that in all sorts of arenas, there are
limits to how much wealth one can keep, how they keep it, how they
employ it, and how long they can keep control of it, even if they are
the ones who created it.

The question is not whether, in current societies, there are rules and
institutions that prevent people from keeping the wealth they have created.
The question is whether such rule and institutions are morally justified.

Furtheremore, there's a general theme that wealth should be put to
productive use and no lone interest should be able to tie it up, hoard it
(at least, not for too long), preventing it from getting into the hands
of those who would so put it to use.

In general, self-interest pushes people to make productive use of their
wealth. If they don't, over time they wind up with a smaller and smaller
slice of the economic pie as their static share is increasingly dwarfed
by the growing wealth of those who engage in ongoing productive activity.
I agree that morally, wealth is to be used. The definition of wealth I've
been using -- goods and services that enhance human life -- implies such.
Of course, this leads to the question of whether it is the proper role of
government to enforce the whole of morality on the population. Isn't that
one of the things we bitch about when the Christian right tries to do it?


We come to the crux of our disagreement - our different views
on morality. I don't view interfering w/an economy as a moral issue,
not necessarily at least, its a matter of pragmatism to me (though
obviously an immoral person/group could get involved w/the system in
some way and do immoral things, such as commit thievery for his
buddies at the expense of everyone else). I do think messing w/the
economy can have disastrous consequences, but that such disaster can
result both from action and *inaction* alike. One should respect that
danger. But in my mind, there is a place and even necessity for
regulation galore.

The modern day corporation, for instance, is a nice loophole
in the rule against perpetuities, since a corporation can potentially
live forever. It can hoard and tie up wealth for as long as it can
sustain itself, if it so chooses.

A modern-day corporation is not an entirely independent entity. It is
itself property, owned by its shareholders, and its actions at any given
time reflect the wishes of the current shareholder majority.


I'll leave this for now since I've discussed corporations
specifically elsewhere in great detail, but will come back to it if
you like.

So what is it about anti-trust law you dislike? I don't want
to make assumptions and spend time arguing against something that it
turns out you agree w/because I misunderstood the crux of your
disagreement.

It is inherently non-objective. It isn't possible to clearly understand
what acts are permitted and prohibited by it. The Supreme Court once
wrote that, if interpreted straight, the Sherman Antitrust Act banned
all contracts. There have been instances of companies convicted under
antitrust law for actions that were explicitly ruled to be legal by the
government in earler cases. Are your prices higher than your competitors?
You're guilty of a successful intent to monopolize. Are your prices lower
than your competitors? Guilty of unfair competition. Are your prices the
same as your competitors? The whole lot of you are guilty of collusion.
The overall effect of the application of antitrust law is to penalize
successful businesses for their success. The grotesque moral inversion
there should be obvious.


I wouldn't disagree w/the statement that some reform is in
order. Business needs predictability to function well, whatever the
lines are, they should be clear. A business owner shouldn't be
suprised to find something he thought was legal turned out not to be,
it should be clear in advance which activities will land him trouble
and which will not. Many areas of law suffer from over-complexity
(like the tax code). I'd be right behind any initiative to simplify
several areas of law, inluding anti-trust, so long as they still did
what they were there for.

I do, however, think its paramount to break up monopolies,
stop price collusion, etc... I would also say it needs to be done in
as predictable of a manner as possible, but the need such laws
address, I agree with.

So if rules involving the taking of wealth only applied to
those who obtained that wealth through means other than their own
thought, effort, and voluntary trade w/others, you'd be ok with that?
Inheritance tax ok w/you? Or more extreme, inheritance cap. Let
people earn their own wealth.

This is a somewhat tricky question. I might argue that my will leaving
my wealth to my wife on my death constitutes a voluntary trade between
me and her -- it is my final act, to gift my wealth to the person or
persons I wish to have it after my death. Unless you want to argue that
there should be a limit on how much of my wealth I can voluntarily choose
to give to someone else? That seems a bit odd. If it's legitimate for
Ted Turner to give a billion dollars of his own money to the UN, why
wouldn't it be legitimate for him to have given that same billion dollars
to one of his kids?


It wasn't really a proposal I was putting forward, more of an
effort to see where you draw the line. Such a thing would be
problematic to implement anyhow. Community property laws would take
care of the money going to your wife on death, if she were to survive
you, if you live in such a state at least (my state is a community
property state). Inter-vivos transfers of wealth would give everyone
else a way around the inheritance tax, just as people do now to get
around probate ($ goes into trust to yourself for life, remainder to
your kid, w/maybe a bank as the trustee to help make it legit. This
is money you gave your kid right now, even if he doesn't take
posession of it until later. Unlike a will you can't change your mind
later, as this is a transaction that is already complete once the
document is properly prepared. Thus its considered a transaction you
made w/in your lifetime. Your kid has a present day interest in the
money now, he's 'vested', even if he doesn't get the money until after
you die. He can even sell that interest to joe six pack, who then
gets teh money when you die, and you won't be able to change that.
These end up having to go through probate anyway if not done right,
like if you make the document and put it in your safe deposit box for
no one to see so you can tear it up and change it as circumstances
change until you finally die, treating it like a will rather than the
trust it purports to be. It has to actually *be* a trust, to work,
not just in name)

Do you agree to accept the standards lawfully adopted by this system
or no? If so, there's your justification, by your own acceptance of
said system in which you participate and partake of.

You're conflating two different senses of 'accept'. I choose to comply
with the laws of the society in which I live. The alternative to that
is to rebel -- to declare that society so hostile to the requirements
of human life that it should be torn down and replaced with something
entirely new. I do not yet judge our current society to be at that stage.
But that doesn't require that I accept all of the laws currently adopted
by that society as morally just or as compatible with the requirements of
human survival and flourishing. Precisely because our society is still
open to influence through debate, I choose to engage in that debate in
the hopes of changing the laws and institutions I consider wrong.


I agree w/you on this one so its hard for me to argue, but I'm
trying anyhow, if not very well. hehe (the gov't could use such an
argument, after all, to say anything it does is morally justfied,
since you voted it into power, you have the power of the vote and
participation, so whatever it does, no matter how awful, is by your
consent, and therefore moral, period. A notion I disagree w/as well).
So anyways, I can see why you feel the way you do. But since I don't
see it as a necessarily moral issue, I don't see the need for 'moral'
justification for taxes, as a for instance. To me its a matter of
pragmatism and can be looked at on a macro level w/an eye to what
benefits everyone. Though I do think such *could* be immoral, like
taxing disenfranchised people, or calling something a 'tax' when its
just money going into someone's pocket, or a tyranny-of-the-majority
tax system as you mention elsewhere, or even a tyranny-of-the-wealthy
tax system. .


I disagree that such is a moral act, or at least, necessarily
so. It could be in certain circumstances for sure. But not by its
very nature as you seem to argue. Many of the actors in such a system
are acting purely out of greed.

Well, as I've come out elsewhere in this thread as an Objectivist it
shouldn't surprise you that I don't consider a self-interested motive
as inherently immoral.

Is a dildo manufacturer commiting wanton acts of morality for
every one that comes off the assembly line? What if he treats his
employees as badly as the law will allow while doing so?

I believe that people who engage in productive activity -- the thought
and effort involved in the creation of wealth -- are engaged in a morally
good activity. Does that automatically mean that such people are, overall,
of good moral character? Of course not. Does it mean you can't have mixed
cases? Of course not. But I would argue that to the extent he acts
immorally with regard to his productive endeavors, he undercuts his
productivity. My experience, for example, leads me to conclude that
all else being equal a happy, well-treated employee is more productive
than an unhappy one.


I'm beginning to think we'll just have to agree to disagree on
whether or not producing wealth is a moral activity, I think we've
both had our say and I don't have much more to add. Especially now
that I see that you aren't all or nothing about it and account for
other acts of morality/immorality in the actors involved. You aren't
single minded about it, as I imagined you were on the subject, so we
aren't in as much disagreement as I thought. Making you less fun.
Disagree more damnit!

As far as a well-treated employee being more productive than
an unhappy one, I disagree. I know it was just an example and doesn't
necessarily effect your argument, but I love to disagree w/people so
take it where I can get it.

There's a reason some companies prefer the cheaper child labor
for which they take no safety responsibility for in foreign countries.
A reasoning behind why they decide to go through the expense of moving
in order to obtain it. True, the child might be less productive in
the sense of not working as well as 30 year old educated american
making 40k a year w/medical benifits and safety rules and regulations
enforced by OSHA and the like. But the child is *exponentially*
cheaper, and from an accountant's point of view the money saved can be
seen as outweighing the lesser ability of the individual child. After
all, even if it takes 3 such children to be as productive as the
american 30 year old, those 3 together are still far far cheaper than
the american, and the employer has less legal responsibility toward
them should things get messy. You and I might not see it that way,
but all sorts of businessmen undoubtedly consider the child to
therefore be the more productive choice, overall. The businessman
who makes the decision gets to decide, based on his own criteria and
standards, what is or is not 'more productive'. How you and I feel
about the matter will not enter in to his decision making.


In all circumstances he is making a product 'which satisfy human needs
and desires', as evidinced by their purchases, and w/out breaking any
laws. Can we put him on a pedastal and call him a paragon of virtue?
I would say hell no.

Two points here. First, you are conflating not violating any laws in a
given jurisdiction with not violating rights. The two are not the same;
it is perfectly possible to have an unjust legal system in which rights
are not protected. Second, as I noted above, there is a difference
between the morality of a given act and the overall moral character of
the actor. In principle, successful wealth production requires thought
and effort devoted to the goal of enhancing human life by figuring
out ways to better satisfy people's needs and desires. That thought
and effort is morally good. The fact that people sometimes mistakenly
think that immoral means -- like employee abuse -- are practical doesn't
render the good aspects of what they do into not-good, it just makes
them mixed overall.

I agree that "there is a difference between the morality of a
given act and the overall moral character of a person". But we know I
agree w/this, its the crux of our argument, that we both agree w/this
statement in different ways. Does an act, such as creating wealth,
have a moral nature in and of itself? I say no, you say yes.

Further, I don't think "successful wealth production requires
thought and effort devoted to the goal of enhancing human life". I
agree w/briarroot more on this one (I can't believe I said that). The
beauty of capitalism is its ability to make a system wide beneficial
effect flow from an individual's greedy motivations. A system that
takes advantage of man's flawed nature. I disagree w/briarroot about
how well a capitalist system can do that alone, I think it needs help,
gov't regulation to put an upper limit on that inherent greed, and
taxes to pay for education, safety net, police, libraries, and a
hygienic populace through universal health care.

But again, we come back to arguing over whether the actor
creating wealth is in his very action commiting a moral act, and I say
not necessarily (though extenuating circumstances can make it either
moral or immoral). In my mind, the actor is usually (not always) just
acting out of greed to better himself w/nary a selfless thought going
into the act, divorcing the act of any positive moral quality, and its
the capitalist system that brings benefit to the rest of us from this
act (though as I said, I think it could use some help to turn
individual greed into something beneficial to all).

But I'll admit we're getting into a tricky area here, an
argument about morality itself. If you could go back in time and
murder hitler as an innocent little boy, and you did, would that be a
moral act?

Applying morality to these sorts of impossible counter-factuals is usually
a pointless exercise. Why not bring the innocent Hitler back to the future
and have him adopted by a loving Jewish family? People's actions are a
product of the ideas they're taught. Educate the child with better ideas
and he grows up into a different man. The dilemma you present simply isn't.

I wasn't clear w/my intent, I apologize. I didn't mean it as
a dilemma of choice. Which would you choose? As you point out, that
would be a false dichotomy, there are other choices one could make.
It doesn't matter what you would choose. The point of the exercise
was to put forward two stories and to ask you, the audience, to
morally judge the actions in the 2 stories and explain the basis for
your judgement. I tried to pick, poorly perhaps, a couple stories
wherein most people would say the same physical act in one instance
was moral, while in the other, immoral, the only difference between
the 2 being the actor's intent. Same act, diferent intent, one moral,
the other immoral. All in order to bring home the point that an act,
divorced from any mind or intent, isn't necessarily moral or immoral,
at least not usually. I could have picked a neutral kind of act,
jaywalking, but that'd be too easy so I deliberately picked one that
would be the most difficult to make such a point with - murder.

For instance, here's a story. A killing occurs. That's it.
That's the story. Is it moral or immoral? You probably want to know
more before you'd be confident in such a determination.

How about this story - wealth is created. That's the whole
story. If your position is accurate, that's all I need to know to be
able to start apportioning moral judgement. I see now that you agree
there might be mitigating factors that come to light when we know
more, countering moral forces as it were, but I'd say there's no basis
to judge yet at all, that I *must* know more before I can start
talking about the morality of this wealth creation.

Leo

.

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