[Nottingham] Is it theft to be live alive? (Was: Media Centre Linux distro?)

[David Aldred]

On 10 May 2012 14:17, Jason Irwin <jasonirwin73 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/05/12 13:28, David Aldred wrote:
> > Hmm.  Infrequent drivers pay for
> > very little fuel, and are overrepresented in third party costs (as they
> > tend to hit things due to lack of familiarity).   People with the latest
> > cars - the rich, generally - pay less (per mile) as their
> > fuel consumption is lower - the poor are taxed more.
> I know it's not perfect but why does that me we /must/ default to
> surveillance?  Are we so bereft of innovation and creativity that we
> need the dead-hand of a machine to watch us?
>

Arguably, that's the point of law - define what is acceptable to society,
and define a process for when the unacceptable happens.   Law is there to
take away the personal - to replace revenge and violence; by its nature it
is impersonal.   Imposing nan impersonal law by an impersonal machine does
risk taking the essential humanity out of it, though.


> > Of course, underlying this is the bigger question, of how society works
> > without any real common basis of morality and hence any common
> > acceptance of standards and regulation, but that's one for the
> > secularists to explain, not me.
> Hmm...I think that as rational humans beings (ignoring the outliers) we
> actually do have a common basis of morality.  Sure, manners and common
> practice may differ from place-to-place but "Don't be a sod and treat
> others as I wish to be treated" is pretty universal.


Yeah, but it's got no reason to be universal.   That's what I mean by a
common *basis* - we have a limited range of shared ideas, but they fall
apart in practical situations since we define things differently, have
different priorities, and what we *mean* by 'don't be a sod' varies from
sod to sod.

(For example,  why is it that a mechanised surveillance system is somehow
'not right'?   I'd say that it's because justice is a human thing, and
the element of humanity is important; but then I say that because I have a
conception and philosophy of humanity which is based on the experience of
God and of human beings as His image.   In a society which
doesn't understand the experience of God and which practically at least
sees human beings as highly-evolved economic units of production,
that argument doesn't work; so there's no reason *not* to rely on a purely
mechanical approach)


> But now we really
> are getting away from the original topic.
>

 Indeed.  But it can be fun :-)

David
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