Sunday 13 November 2011

Using Children to Illustrate Morality

I have been arguing for a long time now that our morality that we use and reference in everyday life should not be any different than that morality which we teach to children. I have recently also heard this said by Anarchist philosopher Stefan Molyneux. He is one of the few people who seem to understand that there is a deeply disturbing double-standard in our ethics. Namely, we apply different ethical standards to our interactions in the private sphere and in the so-called public sphere. So here are some sample scenarios where we can clearly see this as illustrated by children.
Scenario 1: When a child plays in a common play area with other children in the park, they all bring their own individual toys. They can then share the toys, trade them, or just play with their own toys excluding those of other children. If a little boy really wants the toy of another kid, the parents can encourage him to ask the other child to let him play with it or borrow it. They certainly will not take the toy from the child to whom it belongs and give it to their own kid. And they will not instruct their child that it is okay to steal the toys of other children. This applies even if the other child has many more toys than our own child. Just because the other kid has more toys and doesn't want to share them is not a valid reason to steal them and encourage our child to take them. If I heard any parent behave in such a way, I would be outraged.
And yet this is precisely what happens when the State takes money from the rich and gives to the poor. The people with more "toys" are robbed just because they have more stuff. We do not look at why some have more, or why the poor have less. All we do is redistribute the goods. This is a fundamental inconsistency.
Scenario 2: This scenario is from my own family. When I was a little boy, my parents didn't have a lot of money and couldn't buy me that much stuff. What they did though is give me a little bit of money once in a while which I could save up and maybe buy myself some nice toy sometime down the road. They did the same for my sisters. As a child I often tended to be somewhat hedonistic, as all children essentially are until they learn otherwise. I would sometimes spend my money on ice cream and candy, and didn't save up enough to buy nice toys. My sisters, though younger, caught onto this earlier. They gave up the candy in order to buy some cool stuff which lasted. I can't say I was pleased about this - after all they now had toys and I had zilch. But this did not cause my parents to take my sisters' toys and redistribute them between all three of us! Instead, my parents told me I should have saved my money, and that is what I did from that day forward. So, once again, why is this so different from what we see the State doing?! The State takes from those who save and feeds hedonistic habits among other members of the population. I have seen this happen with my own eyes! In the UK now, for example, there are more than 300,000 households where neither of the parents has ever held a job. And these households produce a lot of children, you can be sure of that!
Will the welfare moms and dads in those households teach their children that stealing on the playground is wrong? If so, they should be aware they are shamelessly doing the same thing. Except, as adults, they should know better.

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