Ethics and morals. [LWN.net]

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 21:30 UTC (Wed) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791) [Link]

There is most certainly a difference between ethics and morality. Morality deals with the common law as handed down by God. Ethics is a loose term that does not apply to any particular set of rules. For instance, bank robbers are acting entirely ethically when they rob the bank and distribute the loot as they agreed. It is immoral but ethical.

The problem with saying that something is unethical is that you assume the listener agrees with your set of rules. Morality comes from one source and only that source is authoritative. Men can argue about what is moral and what is not. However, the authority to decide that something is moral or not is not given to man. We may have to put some people in jail because they are a clear and present danger to others, but that doesn't mean we have the right to judge them morally.

You are free to say that someone's behaviour is unethical because almost all human behaviour is unethical because it violates someone's rules somewhere. I, for instance, regard voting as unethical because it means the voter is treating his neighbors and his neighbors' property like they belong to him. If you have no right to rob your neighbor then how do you have the right to take his property by voting? Some says it's ethical, others say it isn't.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 22:25 UTC (Wed) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]

> Morality deals with the common law as handed down by God.

When and where? There had been a lot of twits claiming that their laws had been handed down by God. Most of them claimed that the rest of such twits were hell-bound, and they might very well all be correct in that... Name your poison.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 23:38 UTC (Wed) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791) [Link]

It is true by definition. Morality is the law given by God. Nothing else is moral by definition.

I am not a twit because I believe in God. Why are you calling me names?

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 23:50 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

As far as definitions go, there are a number of them which don't invoke god. Besides, you are missing the point. There are plenty of people claiming to be speaking on behalf of god and some of them clearly contradict others. There isn't any compelling evidence that puts one group as better. People rely on their innate believes and interpret edicts accordingly anyway.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 5, 2011 0:16 UTC (Thu) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

Strangely enough, none of these definitions refer to any sort of god, or even religion:

http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Amorality

You can't meaningfully say that something is "true by definition" on the basis of your own *private* definition, which is apparently not shared by anyone else, and certainly not by your audience. It only works if your audience shares your definition.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 6, 2011 18:30 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

But examine the definition of God.

I'm not religious -- I don't follow any scriptures and am guided very little by faith. I especially don't take instruction from people who are motivated by their faith (e.g. attend church services).

But I have no problem with the statement that morals are handed down by God, and I refer to God all the time. I use the term the way Stephen Hawking does in one of his books, answering the question, "Do you believe in God?" Short answer: "What's not to believe?" Even among religious people, there is a wide spectrum of beliefs about what God does, commands, or wants. So there's no reason not just to define God as the source of all those realities that don't have a more logical derivation. And you can't get away from those -- at the bottom of any logical derivation is some postulate that can't be derived.

I have morals, and I can't defend them by logical reasoning. I don't know where they came from. I say they're from God.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 6, 2011 19:05 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

So there's no reason not just to define God as the source of all those realities that don't have a more logical derivation. And you can't get away from those -- at the bottom of any logical derivation is some postulate that can't be derived.

»If by God one means the set of physical laws that govern the universe, then clearly there is such a God. This God is emotionally unsatisfying ... it does not make much sense to pray to the law of gravity.«  Carl Sagan

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 5, 2011 13:49 UTC (Thu) by michel (subscriber, #10186) [Link]

I recommend you read The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris for an alternative interpretation of how morals came to be.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 5, 2011 21:27 UTC (Thu) by viro (subscriber, #7872) [Link]

I am not calling you names. Consider e.g. Jan van Leiden. Or Savonarola. Both qualify as twits (and much worse) under any definition. Not because they did believe in God. Because of their actions while shoving their versions of theocracy down the throats of people around them. Ones they didn't have cut, that is... Oh, and the former would claim that the latter had been hell-bound. So would the latter, had he lived to see the former. Only God can know if they were right in that, but I would not wish to meet either in whatever afterlife He might see fit to give me...

Face it, when somebody claims that some *particular* law has the authority of God behind it, more often than not the source is extremely nasty. And before you bring the Scripture into that, tell me which parts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are not mandatory anymore. *And* where had the Lord explicitly given the list of such parts.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 22:30 UTC (Wed) by loevborg (guest, #51779) [Link]

There's certainly confusion here, but I can't blame you - this is a notorious question. There's no generally agreed upon distinction between morality and ethics, so Andre is right in the sense that, in most uses of the words, they are interchangable. The same goes for the disciplines "ethics" and "moral philsophy". (Ethics comes from the Greek word for "customs", morals from the Latin word for "customs").

But philosophers (and non-philosophers) love to make distinctions, and they have done so. One such definition is that ethics is concerned with what agents should do generally while morality is concerned with a specific subset of that, viz. questions concerning other-regarding obligations or duties. One way to express this would be to say that morality is inherently public, while the domain of ethics also includes actions that individual or private (Neil has it the other way round). Thus in his Ethics Aristotle deals with the virtue of moderation (don't eat too much candy), which has little to do with other people's interests and is thus not a moral question. But I don't think Linus has this distinction in mind. He merely wants to say that people should care more about how they themselves satisfy the demands of morality and less about how others do.

The view that morality (but not ethics) depends on the idea of a divine lawgiver is also not uncommon, though far from universally held. I don't agree that all human behavior is unethical in some way or other; that seems to be the expression of a rather extreme (cultural or subjective) relativism.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 4, 2011 23:00 UTC (Wed) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

While not everyone sees a distinction, my position is that morality is personal, while ethics are interpersonal. Your morals define whether a given action is right or wrong, even in private, and apply to all situations. Ethics consist of how a group believes its members should interact with each other and the outside world, *as* members of the group, and tend to be defined by consensus. A person who is a member of multiple groups may be influenced by multiple distinct systems of ethics, with varying weights depending their current role.

The same objection that you raise against a universal system of ethics applies even moreso to the concept of a universal system of morality. Ethical rules may vary between different groups, but moral codes vary per *individual*. You see morality as universal only because you limit your consideration to your own particular set of moral rules, as defined by your religion. Others follow different philosophies, religious or otherwise, and adhere to different moral standards. Even within the same nominal philosophy/religion there is typically more variation and debate on the subject of right and wrong than there is on matters of ethical behavior. In calling something "immoral" you assume your listener shares your definition of right and wrong; it is far more likely that they share your *ethics*, which (as you said) is still far from certain.

P.S. I agree with you 100% on the (un)ethics of voting on the use of non-aggressors' property (in regards to the group which recognizes natural property rights, of which I am a member). Moreover, I hold that doing so is also immoral. Of course, someone from outside that group, for example who does not believe in property rights, or who holds that all property rights are granted at the whim of "society", might reasonably disagree--in which case a different set of rules apply.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 5, 2011 19:26 UTC (Thu) by chad.netzer (guest, #4257) [Link]

> For instance, bank robbers are acting entirely ethically when they rob the bank and distribute the loot as they agreed. It is immoral but ethical.

Total rubbish.

If a king is hoarding all the grain, and I rob his silos to feed the people, it is *moral* but unethical. See, not so simple is it?

The Golden Rule is an ethic. It is *the* ethic. And in general, it precludes bank robberies.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 5, 2011 19:58 UTC (Thu) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791) [Link]

All you have done is point out how pointless questions of ethics are. Being ethical does not actually mean that someone is being good. And being unethical does not mean someone is being bad. It only means that they are following rules. There is always a set of rules that contradicts another so all human behaviour is both ethical, because it conforms to somebody's rules, and unethical, because it violates somebody else's rules, at the same time. To condemn a persons actions as unethical has no real tangible meaning.

* Is a whistle blower ethical or unethical? He violates his non-disclosure agreement (unethical) but he points out wrong doing (ethical). Maybe.

* Is your hypothetical king wrong for hording? Why haven't your hypothetical people provided for their own needs? Why have they become a burden to the king? These kinds of examples are oversimplified and intended to generate an emotional response, not a reasoned one. Is that ethical?

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 5, 2011 20:22 UTC (Thu) by chad.netzer (guest, #4257) [Link]

> All you have done is point out how pointless questions of ethics are.

I think what I've done is to point out how pointless *your* absolutist definitions of ethics (and morals) are.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 6, 2011 0:13 UTC (Fri) by h2 (guest, #27965) [Link]

RogerOdle, this thread has to be the one of the more surreal things I've ever seen on lwn.net. Voting is immoral? Or unethical? This viewpoint is weird, to put it mildly. And God cares about your property? Man, I'm not sure what you guys drink or smoke, but whatever it is, hand it over, it must be potent. And you aren't embarrassed to type those words? Being religious and all? What branch of religion says this? Some strange mix of fringe rightwing christian cult and Ayn Randian 'let the strong overrule the weak and say no sorries in the process, just keep your hands off my property', that was stolen from the Indians in the first place ? Assuming you live in the US, of course, there aren't many other nations on this planet that contain advocates of this type of twisted view.

As someone who has studied a large amount of serious philosophy, I view the question of morality/ethics as almost the exact opposite of what you do.

To me, morality is a relative, almost meaningless term, defined by the time and place it occurs in. What is immoral today was not so yesterday, and might not be tomorrow. Every religious system that contains dogmas will almost inevitably then contain its own relative morality. For example, we have a Christian morality, which does not agree with an Islamic morality, which does not agree with a Jewish morality, though they may intersect, but not by necessity.

Ethics, on the other hand, is a far more demanding concept, and goes far deeper than does mere relative morality. Spinoza, for example, in his book titled 'The Ethics', which oddly never really mentions the word at all, for very good reason once you understand the question, is a good place to start. Ethics, that is, flows out of substance, the fundamental fabric of existence, what I assume you are referring to when you use the term 'God'.

Because ethics is a deeper concept, it's harder to explain, though one should know it when it is violated. This is also known as 'The Way', or 'Following the Way'.

What's up with that website anyway, it wants me to confirm an incompetently configured https: security exception just to read Linus's ramblings on things he doesn't understand? I'll pass, thanks.

This would be comical if it weren't so bizarre, and sad.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 6, 2011 19:04 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Your point about voting being unethical as theft is good, but you need to work on the terminology. By definition, you can't take someone's property by voting -- you can't take it at all. Property is what a person exclusively controls. (Legal property, in particular, is what the law permits someone to control). To the extent that I can take my neighbor's money by voting for a tax (and then availing myself of services paid for by that tax), that money was never my neighbor's property.

You should say you think voting is unethical because it reduces individual property. But then I think it would be more in line with your definition of moral, because only God could say individual property is good. Our society is replete with rules saying some community property is good, so things that are inconsistent with individual property should be plenty ethical.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 6, 2011 20:19 UTC (Fri) by RogerOdle (subscriber, #60791) [Link]

The terminology that is lacking is the definition of personal property. It is not within the authority of the state to determine what is your personal property and what isn't. That puts the all property under the control of the state and therefore makes it state property. People who say that the state determines what personal property is do not actually believe that personal property exists. That means all we have are privileges granted at the whim of the state, not property rights. That makes slaves of us all. Talk is cheap and actions speak louder than words. Many people that claim to believe in private property confiscate your property through property taxation and income taxes without your consent or even participation. They do this by redefining private property to mean something that it isn't.

They say that private property is property you hold and manage for the sake of society. This is not true. Private property is your property to use for whatever purposes suit you. That is the definition. If you use it for the sake of society then that is your business. Public property is property that is owned and controlled by the community. The concept in law "in fee simple" means that property has only one legal owner/controller. Private property means that you and only you control the property. The state only controls your private property indirectly by controlling you to the extent that it can not allow you to use your property to harm someone else or otherwise violate their rights. This is prohibitive power which differs from affirmative power where the state tells you what you must do with your own property. The state can not assert affirmative authority over your personal property if it is your personal property. In fact they do just this proving that the people who run the state do not actually believe in personal property and that they believe that your role in life is to do what they say.

Where is the line drawn? The ancient principal that good fences make good neighbors is ignored these days. Instead we have mudslinging politics and angry people. Civilization slides down hill until is crashes and crumbles. Arguments about ethics only leads to angry resentment and hurt feelings because wisdom is not more powerful or effective than emotion. We can know by wisdom what the right thing to do is but the beast of emotion will make us do the wrong thing anyway. Wisdom rules when we have little self interest. We make the most irrational decisions when we have the most self interest. It is at those times when we use rationality to sooth our consciences for the rash decisions we have made.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 6, 2011 22:33 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

You start off with "The terminology that is lacking is the definition of personal property" and then go on to make a bunch of claims about personal property without having defined it. That's confusing.

Or maybe your point was to define personal property such that those claims are all true. In that case, you're describing a kind of moral property, and I think what you describe isn't mathematically possible. I don't think we can divide up the world in a way that each person has complete control of a piece of it unimpeded by what someone else does with other pieces.

Taking land as the easiest example: If Jim and Mary nominally own tracts of land and Mary stops Jim from building a 3-story house on his land, then I suppose you would say Mary is taking Jim's property. But if Jim builds the house and as a result Mary can't see the ocean any more, wouldn't you also have to say Jim has taken Mary's property?

(For purposes of legal property, we always define one or the other of those as a property violation — and it really doesn't matter which — so that the system is self-consistent).

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 7, 2011 0:28 UTC (Sat) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> Taking land as the easiest example: If Jim and Mary nominally own tracts of land and Mary stops Jim from building a 3-story house on his land, then I suppose you would say Mary is taking Jim's property. But if Jim builds the house and as a result Mary can't see the ocean any more, wouldn't you also have to say Jim has taken Mary's property?

That's easy--they're both violations. The trick to an *enforceable* system of property rights, however, is that it's the first violation that counts. Responding in kind is not a violation. Ergo, if Mary used force against Jim to coerce him into not building the house, Mary is at fault. However, if Jim builds the house, violating Mary's property rights, then it is not a violation for Mary to seek restitution, by force if necessary, provided said force is proportional to the damage. (Note that "proportional" can be argued a number of different ways--in kind, cost to make whole, etc.--and any one of those ways would provide sufficient justification.)

The one exception where preemptive force would be justified is when both non-coercive prevention and after-the-fact restitution are unlikely to work; this condition can be summarized as "imminent threat of irreversible harm". That does not apply in this situation, since any harm would be reversible, e.g. by demolishing the new house.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 7, 2011 23:50 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Taking land as the easiest example: If Jim and Mary nominally own tracts of land and Mary stops Jim from building a 3-story house on his land, then I suppose you would say Mary is taking Jim's property. But if Jim builds the house and as a result Mary can't see the ocean any more, wouldn't you also have to say Jim has taken Mary's property?
... if Mary used force against Jim to coerce him into not building the house, Mary is at fault. However, if Jim builds the house, violating Mary's property rights, then it is not a violation for Mary to seek restitution, by force if necessary, provided said force is proportional to the damage.

That doesn't solve the logical inconsistency. Assuming being "at fault" means Mary can't get away with it (has to pay damages or go to jail or something), then Jim is taking Mary's property. And if Mary takes restitution by force when Jim builds his house, Mary is taking Jim's property. This is using the proposed definition of "property" wrt land as being able to do anything you want with the associated tract of land. My point is that it is not possible for both Mary and Jim to be able to do whatever they want with "their" tracts of land. Such "property" cannot exist.

Incidentally, I wasn't thinking of force; I was thinking of zoning regulations. Zoning is one way that one's neighbors excercise ownership over one's nominal property. And they essentially do it by voting.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 8, 2011 4:28 UTC (Sun) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> This is using the proposed definition of "property" wrt land as being able to do anything you want with the associated tract of land. My point is that it is not possible for both Mary and Jim to be able to do whatever they want with "their" tracts of land. Such "property" cannot exist.

The original definition ("Private property is your property to use for whatever purposes suit you.") was sloppy. If this is to be taken as a universal principle, it must be subject to the condition that one respects the same right for others; otherwise, as you say, there is a contradiction. A more formal definition would be "Private property is your property to continue using as it has been used in the past, and in new ways subject to respect for existing property claims by others."

> Incidentally, I wasn't thinking of force; I was thinking of zoning regulations.

Zoning regulations are meaningless without enforcement. Or, put another way, there is no problem with zoning regulations *unless* they are enforced. You are welcome to call an area "residential" or "commercial" or "industrial"--even to encourage such partitioning via voluntary agreements. The issue is specifically with forcing others to comply involuntarily.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 6, 2011 22:59 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

The concept in law "in fee simple" means that property has only one legal owner/controller.

Well, here you don't get to define terms. "In fee simple" has always been a legal term, defined only by law. And it originates in the English land division system of the middle ages, right? So it definitely doesn't mean that the property has only one legal owner/controller, because a lord would hold land in fee simple, and that land was incontrovertibly still under the control of the duke, baron, and king above him, under the principle of eminent domain. (I probably got the hierarchy wrong, but you get the idea).

Today, when we vote to rezone land someone owns in fee simple so he can't do what he wants (or even much of anything) with it, that's the very same eminent domain at work, albeit in democratic instead of monarchical form.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 11, 2011 21:07 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Exactly. There *is* a model of property in which you own it absolutely -- look up 'allodial title'. It is terribly rare, and growing rarer: in jurisdictions supporting it, there is generally a way to convert land held in allodial title into other forms of ownership, but not to go the other way around.

Formally, for all other forms of title, the state (or, in some jurisdictions, the Crown) *is* the ultimate owner. That doesn't mean men in jackboots will come and take it away from you tomorrow, but it does mean they can tax you for it, pursue criminals onto your land, and so on.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 6, 2011 20:38 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> By definition, you can't take someone's property by voting -- you can't take it at all. Property is what a person exclusively controls.

That is one definition, and not a very typical one. Under that rule possession isn't just 9/10 of the law--it's 100%. Congratulations, you've just defined away any possibility of theft. What the thief controls, the thief "owns".

A better definition is that one's property is that which others have no right to prevent one from using, subject to the same rights of others regarding their property. By convention, and to minimize conflict, this right is granted to the first user (homesteading), and one valid use of one's property is to voluntarily transfer this right to another (contract).

> To the extent that I can take my neighbor's money by voting for a tax..., that money was never my neighbor's property.

You're assuming that "property" means "legal property". So far as that goes, local law may not recognize private property at all. Not everyone shares the concept of property as a natural law (i.e. one which enforces itself, albeit in a somewhat more lax manner than the physical laws), but most do ascribe a more... concrete meaning to the term "property" than whatever the law might happen to say at the moment. Consider the concept of "confiscatory taxes"--if the rates are high enough, even the average person understands that taxes represent the seizure of what someone has rightfully earned for his/her own use, even if the tax is perfectly legal.

It is true that one cannot claim a moral or ethical imperative for private property without reference to a particular system of morality or ethics. There have been attempts to define universal ethics on praxeological grounds, but I personally prefer to sidestep the issue entirely: so long as you only respond to violations of your property rights in kind, it doesn't matter whether the other party shares your morals or ethics; any *proportional* response is automatically consistent with *their* effective morality and ethics, as demonstrated by their own actions. As such, they are in no position offer a rational objection.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 6, 2011 22:51 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

By definition, you can't take someone's property by voting -- you can't take it at all. Property is what a person exclusively controls.
That is one definition, and not a very typical one. Under that rule possession isn't just 9/10 of the law--it's 100%.

OK, I wasn't precise enough, but I think this is definition everyone uses. I meant "can't" to be relative to whatever system of property you're talking about. If it's legal property, than "can't take it" means it would be illegal to take it (or the government will force you to give it back, or whatever). For moral property, it would mean that you can't take it without being evil. For de facto property, it would be as you say: 100% possession.

Those are the three kinds of property I think we've been discussing. They're all valid in my book, but you have to use it consistently. For example, if you're talking about a legal election, you have to talk about legal property. So no, you can't take someone's property by voting because anything you can "take" was your property to begin with. Likewise, if you're talking about the peasants rising up and voting to take control of the land they farm from an oppressive king, that's a moral vote to repossess moral property which was morally the peasants' to begin with, so no property is taken.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 7, 2011 0:48 UTC (Sat) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> For example, if you're talking about a legal election, you have to talk about legal property. So no, you can't take someone's property by voting because anything you can "take" was[n't] your property to begin with.

That's a perfectly reasonable analysis from the legal point-of-view, but the fact that the election is legal does not mean one can only analyze it from a legal perspective. From the perspective of natural law (or moral property rights, if you will), the election, however legal it may have been, had no effect on moral property rights. Speaking from that point-of-view, it is perfectly valid to say that people held a legal election and then, on the basis of that vote, proceeded to take others' property immorally for their own use. It is also reasonable to say that since the entire purpose of the vote was to determine whether or not to act immorally, the vote itself is immoral--by voting on this topic (or at least in favor) one is seeking permission to act immorally, or asking someone else to do so.

I understand that you may not agree with the moral code used in this example, but that isn't really the point. The legal, moral, and (though rather pointless) "de facto" aspects of property rights all apply to any situation simultaneously. You don't choose one based on the context and ignore the rest. Legal actions have moral and practical dimensions, and vise-versa.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 8, 2011 0:11 UTC (Sun) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

For example, if you're talking about a legal election, you have to talk about legal property. So no, you can't take someone's property by voting because anything you can "take" was[n't] your property to begin with.
That's a perfectly reasonable analysis from the legal point-of-view,

You appear to be reading something rather different from what I wrote, because I didn't offer any analysis at all. I'm just defining terms and parsing sentences. And "was" is what I meant. By definition, if you're talking about a legal election and legal property, whatever the public can take by voting was the public's to begin with (eminent domain); the election merely exercises that ownership. There's no theft.

The legal, moral, and (though rather pointless) "de facto" aspects of property rights all apply to any situation simultaneously. You don't choose one based on the context and ignore the rest. Legal actions have moral and practical dimensions, and vise-versa.

But you should be clear which one you're talking about in any given sentence, and especially avoid switching off from one to another mid-sentence. I also believe "moral property" is a pretty useless concept -- as I said in the beginning I'd rather someone say he favors highly individualized legal property than say he believes moral property is highly individualized and he is against laws that let you steal people's moral property. They both say the same thing, but the former makes it a clearer what the belief is. Maybe just because legal property is by far the most commonly discussed kind of property.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 8, 2011 4:59 UTC (Sun) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> By definition, if you're talking about a legal election and legal property, whatever the public can take by voting was the public's to begin with (eminent domain); the election merely exercises that ownership. There's no [legal] theft.

True. However, we weren't talking about legal property or legal theft. We were speaking of moral property and moral theft in connection with a legal election. Ergo, this definition is irrelevant.

> But you should be clear which one you're talking about in any given sentence, and especially avoid switching off from one to another mid-sentence.

I agree. However, there is no "switching off" occurring here. The entire statement was a moral statement, which just happened to refer to an legal election, i.e. one which is accepted by the law. It is not an error to refer to legal concepts like elections in a moral context. By example:

De facto: Those holding the vote have a near-monopoly on the use of force (police, military, etc.) Ergo, direct resistance to enforcement of the vote is futile.

Legal: The law permits ownership/control of property to be transferred to "the public" based on the outcome of a vote. Ergo, the property now legally belongs to the public. (It is still not inaccurate to say that the property was "taken" from its former private owner; the vote does not rewrite history. It merely makes the taking legal.)

Moral/Ethical: By my moral code, and my ethics as a libertarian, a vote (however legal and/or enforceable) has no effect whatsoever on the actual, moral ownership of property unless the owner voluntarily submits their property to said vote. Ergo, removing the property from the owner's control following the vote is (morally) an instance of theft, and thus wrong, again by my moral code. As such, I choose not to participate.

Ethics and morals.

Posted May 11, 2011 19:16 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

No, no. Ethics and *aesthetics* are one and the same. :)