From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu May 09 2002 - 21:27:33 MDT
Harvey writes
> It seems instinctively obvious that the common good should outweigh the
> individual good. However, it quickly leads to the majority oppressing
> the minority. Worse yet, such a system can evolve into an oppression
> hell where everybody is working toward the "common good" while no
> individuals actually benefits.
Yes, quite so.
> I think such a system is really a defensive maneuver against the
> possibility that a small group of individuals will override a larger
> group of individuals. I think people who promote the "common good" are
> really promoting wide-spread individual rights. They just don't believe
> that it can be achieved for everyone, so they are willing to sacrifice a
> few individuals along the way.
Who do you have in mind? Here are the examples that I can
think of that might fit: some military people might attempt
a take over "for everyone's good", (Seven Days in May), or
some moderately extreme environmentalists might do the same
in order to save us from polluting ourselves to death. But
both these cases stem from certain people perceiving a crisis
or emergency.
Perhaps you are thinking of some socialists who would, for the
common good, confiscate the wealth of the few.
> Such a system is flawed, however. If individual rights can
> be ignored for one or a few, it can be ignored for anybody.
Maybe so. But such people, as in my examples, can proclaim
a certain principle that they're acting upon, and maintain
not implausibly, that adherance to this well known principle
will be no harder that adherance to the erstwhile legal
rights of individuals.
I still maintain that the reason individual rights must be
respected is evolutionary: it works.
Lee
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