From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Dec 27 2001 - 14:39:57 MST
On Fri, Dec 28, 2001 at 02:45:29AM +0800, Chen Yixiong, Eric wrote:
>
> << Compare this to my earlier discussions of having a minimalist universal ethics in a society to guarantee rights, with the ethics
> of individual put on top of this; in this case the inter-community constitution would be similar to the minimalist ethics and mainly
> deal with guaranteeing the rights of people and communities, but not prescribing their internal structure - that is left to their
> internal rules. >>
>
>I see a major problem here with this thinking.
>
>What if there exists a better way to solve our social problems than
>using "rights", or at least, a better implementation and definition of
>"rights"? If you base your treaty on such concepts, it might actually
>restrict other's freedom even if you seek to guarantee freedom. G?del's
>Theorem does not let you off so easily here.
>
>In my opinion, we can define a better guide to decision making than
>"rights" due to the highly flawed nature of "rights". The only "rights"
>I might grant consist of the right of non-intervention (but not to
>life, liberty and others "God granted" or inherent rights), but even
>this has serious flaws defined in this context. A new vocabulary and
>way of thinking has to arise to explain this clearly.
If you wait for someone to develop the perfect terminology you will have
to wait forever. Instead use state-of-the-art ethical and political
terminology in the constitution, and be aware that it might need future
updating (and that this updating may be troublesome). As for the flaws
of rights, do you really have any alternative? Right now there doesn't
seem to exist any better terminology than rights, so that is likely what
people would use.
Note that we have talked about rights very loosely here - it is a big
subject in philosophy, and there exist a huge range of rights, forms of
rights, motivations for rights and things to base rights from. Are you
saying all these approaches are futile, or are you doubtful about
certain commonly used rights concepts?
>As such, the treaty should not aim to cover all bases with "rights" but
>more with some sensible systems-based rules that also happen to
>discourage the problems associated with lack of "rights". For instance,
>the core rule that others can leave freely will prevent supression of
>freedom (as most people define it).
What if the community claims you owe them a certain amount of money? I
can imagine a constitution saying you cannot leave unless you pay off
your debts, which means communities could hold people inside simply by
forcing an administrative fee on them. Or the constitution could say you
are free to leave - which means you could sneak away from debts. Neither
situation is particularly desirable. With a rule based system you cannot
avoid this kind of problems, because the rules do not generalize like
statements of rights. With a rights system you can add a generalization
layer to the rules: people have the right to leave, with a rule telling
certain conditions on this like having to settle debts but also with a
clause telling that this rule only applies for reasonable situations -
i.e. the "administrative fee" could be judged against the right. This is
hard to do with a strictly pure rule based system since that doesn't
contain any information about the meaning of the rules and what values
they are intended to uphold - try defining "unreasonable" only using
rules.
> << There isn't any need to try this across the entire world at once, but it can be started on a relatively small scale and then
> develop (both by more communities/nations joining, and possibly by the creation of smaller sub-communities if it appears promising
> locally). >>
>
>I think the current world situation does not seem encouraging in this
>aspect because many nations and people still feel unprepared for it.
>For instance, one sometimes hears jokes on the political apathy in
>Singapore, and it seems like Singaporeans do not have enough maturity
>to accept a full-fledged democracy (though many might disagree). Nations
>also seem very much attached to their histories and current ways of
>life (read Israel vs. Palestine, China vs. Taiwan, India vs. Pakistan).
So? The fact that a lot of people doesn't get it doesn't mean it is not
a practical idea. The Internet developed wonderfully long before it was
known to many people, and in fact it was likely this long try-out period
that made it so resilient and robust once a lot of people began to flock
to it. If 99% of humanity views the federation(s) with apathy or scorn,
so what? That gives plenty of time to iron out the bugs and see if the
system really is worth anything. It also gives time to people to come up
with new ways of seeing things and ways of presenting the new ideas to
others.
>I suspect that a great shock must occur to underline very clearly the
>problems of the current international political systems before even a
>minority of the nations will consider this. Even so, if the largest,
>most powerful nations (who would lose the most with this great shift in
>global political power) influenced the UN to outlaw or seriously
>deminish the power of the Federation (such as by not allowing dual
>membership), this can cause a great set-back.
I think this kind of "political catastrophism" is wrong. First, great
changes can occur gradually (just look at the move towards free markets
and democracy in Chile, for example - no Berlin walls falling there - or
the emergence of the EU) and do not require huge concerted movements of
many nations. A small test here, another there, positive results
stimulating another nation to informally change its regional policy, a
second nation taking up the idea to defuse an ethnic problem, and so on
- that can make the federative idea real.
I have repeatedly seen people here on this list falling into the trap of
thinking that the stuff we are discussing here is so revolutionary, so
transformative that it has to get into direct conflicts with The Powers
That Be. It is a very conventient way of thinking, since it both
produces exciting scenarios (Hollywood memes), boosts the illusion of
importance of the ideas and promotes inaction (so you can never be
proven wrong). Just look at how the numerous threads about artificial
island nations always end. But frankly, the federation idea is hardly
revolutionary and would be a trivial blip on the world political scene
compared to current and near future issues like terrorism, the rise of
China and India, the federative changes in Europe, globalization and
everything else. Things may change if the federation starts to become
significant, but remember that significant changes never happen unless
there are powerful forces *promoting* them - be they economic, political
expediency, technological momentum, massive popular support or - most
importantly - that many believe in the idea.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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